Ravenous (Film Review)

1999 20th Century Fox
Directed by: Antonia Bird; Written by: Ted Griffin
Starring: Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, Jeremy Davies, Jeffrey Jones, John Spencer, Neal McDonough, and David Arquette
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 100 Minutes

The Nicsperiment Score: 8/10  

John Boyd is a coward. In the middle a battle during the Mexican-American war, he falls to the ground and plays dead. Boyd is soon lifted by the enemy onto a cart, stacked with his dead fellow soldiers, and is hauled into the middle of the enemy encampment. After hours and hours of his comrades blood and viscera dripping down his throat, Boyd suddenly finds himself imbued with strength, rises up, and takes the enemy position single-handedly. He's later greeted at home as a returning hero, and promoted to the rank of Captain, but his knowing superiors also decide to ship him to a far-flung frontier fort. There in the wilderness, Boyd will apparently finish his professional career without note, among a small handful of other military outcasts. Shortly into his strange stay, though, a visitor breaks his new troop's snowy, late-night reverie. It's a traveller who claims that his party fell on hard times, overwintered in a cave, and had to resort to cannibalism. The traveller also claims that one of his party has grown extremely bloodthirsty past the point of normal hunger, and there are people still in the cave who need saving. But is this man who he says he is...and why does the sight and smell of meat make Boyd suddenly nauseous?

For her last cinematic trick, director, Antonia Bird, effortlessly melds adventure, horror, a Western, dark humor, and a social commentary on America's Manifest Destiny policies (among other things) into a 100-minute film, all without any time to prep beforehand. Bird was brought in to 1999's Ravenous at the suggestion of her long-time collaborator, actor, Robert Carlyle, when the original director left three weeks after shooting started. You'd never know she came on late after experiencing this film's singular, cohesive vision.

As Boyd, Guy Pearce brings a quiet, frightened intensity, while Antonia all-star, Robert Carlyle, shows up for her one last time, as the mysterious stranger who plunges Ravenous into cannibalistic hell. The depths of this film are bizarre and unexpected, and further revealed with each viewing. Truly, the actual terror in Ravenous is the horror of its ideas and what they symbolize, yet just skimming the surface of this gnarly film is also quite satisfying. Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman's avant-garde soundtrack, featuring a strange blend of classical, folk, Appalachia, and electronic music keeps the film fun and strangely upbeat, even as characters eat...other characters.

While the latter half may flag just a slight bit in energy compared to the first, there's never a shortage of ingenuity here, and the film's climax is a knockdown, drag-out, blast. There truly is no other film like Ravenous, and there is no other director like Antonia Bird.