Ravenous (1999)

The Worst Film Ever

Thanks for the memories!

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

"Ravenous" is a horror movie set in California in the 1840's. After exhibiting cowardice in battle, an army lieutenant (Guy Pearce) is exiled to a remote outpost in the dead of winter. Soon after arriving, a mysterious stranger appears with a grisly tale of how he & his travelling companions were forced to resort to cannibalism after getting lost on the way to their destination. A rescue party is hastily assembled but it soon becomes apparent that the stranger is harbouring a dark secret.The story is fairly unique, making use of wendigo mythology which has its origins in Native American folklore. The narrative's a bit disjointed, though, and I don't think that it wrings all of the tension that it could out of the situation. The touches of black humour may harm more than help since they subdue the horror to a certain degree without really lending much of a satiric bite.The cast is pretty good, at least, especially for a horror movie. Guy Pearce may be a bit bland in the lead role but Robert Carlyle made up for that with a boldly villainous performance. The supporting cast includes some notable character actors like Jeffrey Jones, Neal McDonough & Jeremy Davies. David Arquette, despite being one of the top-billed stars (no doubt due to his involvement in the "Scream" franchise), didn't really add much to the movie.Director Antonia Bird had the unenviable task of taking over a few weeks into shooting after the original director was fired. The end result doesn't seem to reflect this turmoil, though I found the opening credits sequence to be jarringly out of place (which, to be fair, probably wasn't Bird's fault). I can't say that I was a fan of the score by Michael Nyman and (Blur's) Damon Albarn, either.In the end, "Ravenous" does a decent job with its premise even though the film doesn't quite live up to its full potential. It's worth watching but is unlikely to ever gain more than a cult following.

One of the most original movies ever made. Also one of the funniest black comedies of all time. It's funny the same way Fargo is. In fact, if the Coen Brothers ever returned to their thriller roots, or made a straight up horror, this is the type of movie they might end up with.This AV Club blurb does a spot on job of conveying why this movie is so good.It may be hard to believe now, but once upon a time — call it the late Nineties — a major movie studio sunk $12 million into a comedic western about 19th century soldiers who believed eating other humans endow folks with superhuman strength and the ability to recover from life- threatening injuries. When shooting on the film crashed to a halt after three weeks of interference and executive micromanaging, one of the suits at at 20th Century Fox hit upon an idea: fire director Milcho Manchevski — the Macedonian art house sensation whose devastating wartime romance Before the Rain was nominated for an Oscar — and replace him with Raja Gosnell, whose only feature credit to date was Home Alone 3. Shockingly, it didn't work out.The cast, lead by Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle (fresh off his BAFTA-winning performance in The Full Monty), rejected Gosnell like a body denying a transplanted heart, and Ziskin's filmmaker of choice returned to the comforts of his wheelhouse in Los Angeles, where he would promptly get to work on Never Been Kissed. Carlyle eventually pressured Fox into filling the director's chair with his trusted collaborator, Antonia Bird, a veteran of British TV whose best known feature on these shores was Priest, about a closeted man of the cloth. It did not sound like an ideal match- up. Shockingly, it turned out great.Ravenous is a film that, by design, was forced to thread the needle between three different genres, a challenge that few directors have the finesse to overcome under normal circumstances — let alone on a project that had more cooks in the kitchen than it did carnivores on screen. Kicking off with the twang of a banjo that might not have been tuned since 1846, this Mulligan's stew of a movie walks such a fine line between bleak comedy ("He was licking me!"), hyper- violent survival drama, and supernatural creature-feature that the guy narrating the trailer seems to have no idea what he's actually selling. Advertising lies all the time, but seldom is it so confused: "One man must choose between having dinner, and being dinner…" (You wait for him to follow that oddly jokey declaration up with "I guess?") Audiences of the time can hardly be blamed for not being sold.But while many studio boondoggles betray the messiness of their making (Fantastic Four, anyone?), this ragged, unsung 1999 gem was one of the very few that was able to feed off the chaos. An origin story about the American spirit, the film is a lot like America itself: a melting pot of disparate elements, thrown together in a fit of violence, and galvanized by the righteous illusion that this is how God intended it to be.Subtlety is not on the menu here, and it's easy to imagine how the bluntness of the script by Ted Griffin (Ocean's 11) helped it weather the constant assault of studio notes and creative upheaval. The story begins by introducing us to Second Lieutenant John Boyd (Guy Pearce), a Mexican- American War vet who's being promoted to Captain after killing an entire unit of enemy soldiers on their own turf. The problem is that, after playing dead and being stacked in a heap of corpses, our hero was only capable of such battlefield bravery because of an unsettling jolt of strength — which he got from drinking trickling-down blood. Boyd is now nauseated at the sight of raw meat; he pukes behind a tent after a celebratory banquet as the title card flashes on screen. Laughs are usually the first things that get lost when a movie is Frankensteined together, but the film's sick sense of humor remained intact.Surprisingly, a story that rubs our faces in America's ongoing history of cannibalism (cultural, commercial, or otherwise) is always going to be a tough sell in a country that still celebrates Columbus Day. Ravenous bombed at the box office, grossing $10 million less than it cost to make and anticipating a climate where a film like this would be lucky to premiere at Fantastic Fest in advance of a straight-to-VOD release. Perhaps that's for the best. A major studio trying to wrangle something so bloodthirsty and off-kilter is like a child trying to raise a feral hyena — it's too wild to tame, and it's always laughing at you for trying.But maybe this movie isn't quite as bleak as it appeared at the time; maybe this is just a case of not being able to see the forest for the trees. For all of its nihilism, this perverse take on the weird, weird West digs so deep into the darkness that it eventually shines a light out through other side. Like Colqhoun, it knows that we have to face the truth — and like Boyd, it knows that doesn't mean we have to live with it. To quote the film's opening title card, it's never too late to say "Eat me."

Even the soundtrack is hypnotic! One of those films similar to Dawn of the Dead, where you automatically get chills when you hear it.This film is very believable, both visually and with the storyline. Without eluding to a spoiler, this brings you along a path of humor, horror and plain weirdness. The great thing about it is, again this is a film that is unique. The story is different from the same cookie cutter films that are churned out now. This is what pulls you in, something different. What keeps you watching is the character development and great acting.This movie is highly recommended. Sit back and relax, you will enjoy this film!

RAVENOUS is a historical comedy horror set on the American frontier in the 19th century. It's a world of extreme cold, snow, hardship and cannibalism, as those trapped in remote outposts are driven to feast on the flesh of one another in order to survive. It's an interesting film for sure, but also one that's all over the place tonally.I understand that the film's original director quit for whatever reason, so Robert Carlyle suggested Antonia Bird for the role. Bird and Carlyle had previously worked together on the excellent low budget British crime film FACE, so the choice seemed a good one, but I'm not sure that Bird was quite right for this material. Although RAVENOUS is extremely gory, it's never in the least bit horrific, while the attempts at black comedy aren't all that successful.Instead what we have is an action-focused story of survival, loaded with gore effects and general nastiness. RAVENOUS is worth watching thanks to the sterling efforts of a great little cast, headlined by Guy Pearce back when he was just starting out in Hollywood. Robert Carlyle makes for a great psychotic bad guy as always, and the casting director has done a good job for interesting character actors: the creepy Jeffrey Jones, Neal McDonough, and Jeremy Davies. The less said about David Arquette the better, though.