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In 19th-century America, a soldier is assigned to a remote military outpost but soon runs into trouble when his unit encounters a man telling tales of cannibalism.
I'm definitely intrigued by how far the definition of what consitutes a horror movie can stretch simply by featuring a signifier that one would commonly associate with the genre like vampires or werewolves. I daresay cannibalism is one such signifier that is much harder to completely separate from the concept of horror, especially because it's not only more realistic than such mythological creatures but also because of how it can tap into certain fears about humans' place within the natural order of things - not just because it would be unnatural for people to eat one another except under the most dire of circumstances, but because of the fear that it might actually come to us a lot more naturally than we would like. Such is the situation that Guy Pearce's protagonist finds himself in as he, an American soldier who becomes a war hero by virtue of his own cowardice, is exiled to a remote mountain outpost. As if the isolation wouldn't be troubling enough on its own, things are complicated further when a ragged stranger (Robert Carlyle) shows up at the outpost one day. He says that the group he was travelling with got snowbound and had to resort to cannibalism, only for him to escape when the group's leader finally got around to targeting him. Naturally, the soldiers send out a rescue party and that's when the story really begins...
Ravenous ends up being a film where separate elements are distinctly interesting but I'm not entirely convinced that they ever truly come together into something great. It's certainly something to see Pearce - whose character is first introduced as being traumatised to the point of being violently ill at the premise of eating a particularly juicy steak - try to survive the wrath of cannibals whose actions show that there might actually be something worse than a cannibal simply trying to kill and eat you. He also gets to play the miserable straight man to Carlyle's scenery-chewing extravagance, though even their dynamic can get a little tiresome. The same goes for the film's approach to cannibalism being akin to vampirism in its borrowing from a Native American myth about how eating people allows one to gain restorative powers at the cost of one's humanity, retaining the tragic seduction angle common to the sub-genre but not doing much with it in the process. Apart from the odd interesting development, the pacing is so off-kilter throughout the first and second act that it really does take a strong third to make it come even somewhat together. Of particular note is the soundtrack, a collaboration between The Piano composer Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame, which pieces together a variety of delightfully urgent-sounding pieces ranging from the frantic plucking that accompanies the opening credits to the monotonous throbbing that accompanies the final confrontation between hero and villain. While some elements and scenes are very much appreciable on their own terms, Ravenous isn't all that satisfying as a whole. It's a slight movie that's somewhat worth a watch simply for its highlights, but beyond that it just leaves me hungry for more.
#11 - Ravenous
Antonia Bird, 1999
Antonia Bird, 1999
In 19th-century America, a soldier is assigned to a remote military outpost but soon runs into trouble when his unit encounters a man telling tales of cannibalism.
I'm definitely intrigued by how far the definition of what consitutes a horror movie can stretch simply by featuring a signifier that one would commonly associate with the genre like vampires or werewolves. I daresay cannibalism is one such signifier that is much harder to completely separate from the concept of horror, especially because it's not only more realistic than such mythological creatures but also because of how it can tap into certain fears about humans' place within the natural order of things - not just because it would be unnatural for people to eat one another except under the most dire of circumstances, but because of the fear that it might actually come to us a lot more naturally than we would like. Such is the situation that Guy Pearce's protagonist finds himself in as he, an American soldier who becomes a war hero by virtue of his own cowardice, is exiled to a remote mountain outpost. As if the isolation wouldn't be troubling enough on its own, things are complicated further when a ragged stranger (Robert Carlyle) shows up at the outpost one day. He says that the group he was travelling with got snowbound and had to resort to cannibalism, only for him to escape when the group's leader finally got around to targeting him. Naturally, the soldiers send out a rescue party and that's when the story really begins...
Ravenous ends up being a film where separate elements are distinctly interesting but I'm not entirely convinced that they ever truly come together into something great. It's certainly something to see Pearce - whose character is first introduced as being traumatised to the point of being violently ill at the premise of eating a particularly juicy steak - try to survive the wrath of cannibals whose actions show that there might actually be something worse than a cannibal simply trying to kill and eat you. He also gets to play the miserable straight man to Carlyle's scenery-chewing extravagance, though even their dynamic can get a little tiresome. The same goes for the film's approach to cannibalism being akin to vampirism in its borrowing from a Native American myth about how eating people allows one to gain restorative powers at the cost of one's humanity, retaining the tragic seduction angle common to the sub-genre but not doing much with it in the process. Apart from the odd interesting development, the pacing is so off-kilter throughout the first and second act that it really does take a strong third to make it come even somewhat together. Of particular note is the soundtrack, a collaboration between The Piano composer Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz fame, which pieces together a variety of delightfully urgent-sounding pieces ranging from the frantic plucking that accompanies the opening credits to the monotonous throbbing that accompanies the final confrontation between hero and villain. While some elements and scenes are very much appreciable on their own terms, Ravenous isn't all that satisfying as a whole. It's a slight movie that's somewhat worth a watch simply for its highlights, but beyond that it just leaves me hungry for more.