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Ravenous Foregoing the usual hurrah I give for movies that try to be interesting, I couldn't help but feel Ravenous was a film made by a schizophrenic director. A fascinating story of cannibalism, vampirism, Native American legend, a subtle bit of ignoring Christian mythology, set upon a stage that prepares us for a most spectacular tale of horror in the mountains. The story is simple, a coward who becomes a hero through circumstances is sent to a far off isolated outpost. Soon a wandering lost man comes to the outpost telling a story of starvation and cannibalism. He leads the soldiers of the outpost back to the place of the horrific crime. That is where the shmoo hits the fan. The cowardly hero has to come to terms with his own accidental cannibalism that took place when he pretended to be dead and had the bodies of his fallen comrades stacked on top of him, their blood draining into his mouth and down his throat. From this he got the strength to crawl out from the corpses and save the day. But he had become overtaken by an ongoing hunger for human flesh. In the mountains, the Native American guides tell the story of Wendigo, a monster that once it begins eating human flesh, cannot be stopped and becomes a walking appetite. Our hero is forced to become a cannibal in order to survive to stop another cannibal. Bad versus Far Worse. The reluctant man-eater versus the savage predator. Then, if two weren't enough, another cannibal gets tossed into the mix just to keep the audience on their toes. If the movie would have pursued this plot as a vampire movie would have, throwing in ample angst, concepts of humanity, the beast within us all, it would have been an excellent movie and I would recommend it heartily to everyone. Yet this movie was campy. It was filled with throwaway characters that you never get a chance to care about, there isn't any great battle of wits between the villain and hero. And at times, the "surprises" that get thrown into the plot seem to be more because the writer couldn't come up with a better explanation than to put in an twist that wasn't needed. Fundamentally, rent this movie along with a comedy and have yourself a night of laughing entertainment. Don't think for a moment this movie will give you nightmares, but it will give you a good recipe for stew.
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