TO mix horror and comedy and have it work – as in ”An American Werewolf in London” or ”Scream” – you need a well-written script and a director with a sure hand.
”Ravenous” has neither. The result is a waste of a fine cast.
The movie starts off shakily, with hokey-jokey titles and a quotation from Nietzsche that misspells the philosopher’s name. Things go mostly downhill from there.
”Ravenous” is one of those once-bitten movies with the werewolf/vampire theme replaced by cannibalism. It relies on the notion that if cannibalism is taboo, there must be something wonderful about human flesh: Either people meat is addictively delicious or it gives you super powers – or, as here, both. The only original aspect of the story is its setting, a remote Army base in the 1840s.
In 1847, during a battle in the Mexican-American War, cowardly Captain Boyd (Guy Pearce) pretends to be dead. After his unit is wiped out, he awakens in a pile of corpses with his commander’s blood dripping into his mouth. In a moment of uncharacteristic courage, he crawls out and captures a Mexican outpost. The Army gives him a medal and sends him out to the California Sierras.
Fort Spencer turns out to be the home of some unlikely soldiers, including a religious maniac (Jeremy Davies) and a stoner who spends all his time smoking marijuana with Indians (David Arquette). The motley squad is led by the bookish, cynical Hart (Jeffrey Jones).
One snowy night, a stranger collapses inside the gates. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle, of ”The Full Monty” and ”Trainspotting”) says he was one of six winter-bound pioneers who took refuge in a cave and turned to cannibalism when the food ran out.
Hart leads a team to rescue the remaining survivors – despite learning of the Indian myth that a man who eats another steals his spirit, but then develops a craving for human flesh. Colqhoun accompanies the expedition, but it soon becomes horribly clear that he hasn’t told them the whole truth.
What follows is gory stuff, although some scenes are suddenly, jarringly played for laughs, as if director Antonia Bird couldn’t figure out a tone for her movie. She’s also clueless when it comes to action sequences, and tries to overcome their unconvincing feel by including too many shots of blood gushing out of mouths.
Cheesy music doesn’t help; neither does bad lighting and substandard photography. But what really dooms ”Ravenous” is an amateurish script that often makes no internal sense (the story rides on the assumption that if there’s no deli within walking distance, people face the choice of cannibalism or starvation). It also includes some undergrad drivel implying that cannibalism is a product of American capitalism’s drive westward.
Yet ”Ravenous” has kitschily enjoyable sections – if only because Carlyle makes such a terrific villain and Jeffrey Jones is so watchable.
But poor Guy Pearce – who resembles Brad Pitt under his beard and lank hair – seems to have been stunned by the awful writing into a blank, expressionless performance.
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