Macabre...ish Horror Review: Ravenous

Ravenous, 1999/ 100 min

Second Lt. John Boyd (Guy Pearce) gets orders to Fort Spencer, a remote post, a way station, in Sierra Nevada, California and staffed by quite the array of misfits, all 7 of them. They include a drunk, a couple of drug addicts and Pvt. Reich.

This is Boyd’s reward for cowardice in the Mexican American War, where he played dead to survive.

Shortly after his arrival, a frost bitten stranger is found and tells a tale of 3 months of lost isolation, taking cover in a cave, starvation and cannibalism. They get a search party together but are warned by a Native American employee, to beware the Wendigo. A demon curse which becomes the burden of a man who consumes human flesh, he will take on the strength of the consumed and the urge for more human will become insatiable.

Once the soldiers arrive at the cave they discover 5 skeleton and that the story they were told was not quite true and most definitely a trap. Boyd, escapes the trap and try to save the rest but no one believes him. The frost bitten stranger has taken on another identity and has big plans for the way station.

With Manifest Destiny and so many people moving west, the Wendigo myth becomes prophetic. The plan: convert those who remain at the post and consume the rest.

This is a western horror with great cast! John Spencer, Neal McDonough, Robert Carlyle, David Arquette. It’s also bloody and gory. Some dark humor. Nice flashbacks and fantasy scenes. Frustrating and miserable end. A good story done well!!