Ravenous


Starring Guy Pearce, Robert Carlisle, Jeffrey Jones, John Spencer, David Arquette, Jeremy Davies Stephen Spinella, Neil McDonough. Directed by Antonia Bird.

In 1847 United States, newly promoted Captain John Boyd recently received a medal of valour for for playing dead behind enemy lines, and then killing a bunch of Mexicans. But General Slauson isn't impressed, and has him banished to Fort Spencer, in the middle of nowhere in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Northern California. It is led by the philosophical and unambitious Colonel Hart (Jones) and a few motley soldiers including the action-seeking Reich (McDonough), the mostly drunk doctor Knox (Spinella) and the perenially high Cleaves (Arquette). But their quiet, isolated world is in for a rude awakening, with the arrival of a half-starved Scot name Colqhoun (Carlisle) with a gruesome story to tell.

Colqhoun, after recovering from exposure and hunger, tells the incredulous soldiers a story of treachery and starvation, where a rogue military officer and his small group of settlers going into the mountains as a shortcut to the California coast are stranded by the weather in a cave for a few months, and eventually turn to cannibalism to survive. Colqhoun tells how he escaped when the soldier started killing the remaining settlers, as he became overcome with the what the natives call "Weendingo", where the person who eats another gains his spirit, and an increase in strength and virility, and becomes consumed with the desire to eat human flesh. Colqhoun leads Hart and the soldiers back into the mountains to investigate, but things don't go quite as expected when they discover what happened at the cave.

Following the advice of Ben Franklin "Eat to live. Don't live to eat.", the film (sort of) advances the notion that when it's a choice between life and death, who cares if it's wrong - you do what you must to survive. While there is a fair amout of gore, and plenty of potential for horror, this little tale is played as a comedy, a very black comedy, but there are not that many laughs. The potential tension that can be created by us wondering who might be killed for his food value is pretty much disappated. And there is not much to the story either. Characters drift in and out, and not a lot of interest happens. Carlisle, of Full Monty and Trainspotting fame, is smoothly charming as the decidedly evil Colqhoun, and Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) is fine as the torn army officer, but the best performance is delivered by Jones, who displays a world-weariness and sense of humour which adds to the film. But overall Ravenous is not that delicious.




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