You Are What You Eat

As it’s the spooky season, it seemed fitting to visit some of the greats of horror. Now, I recognize I said that as part of my intro to the film Ravenous, a movie that absolutely tanked at the Box Office, pulling in a measly $2 Mil against its budget of $12 Mil, this despite a stacked cast including Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, John Spencer, and Neal McDonough, and a great concept. The film simply failed to find its audience, with people confused by its setting, tone, and style, all of which led to it tanking upon its release in 1999.

And yet, the film is an absolute winner, easily one of my favorites of the genre. Why? Because all the things that audiences hated at the time – a tone that blends horror and pitch black comedy along with plenty of horrible, disgusting gore, all alongside a period piece setting – is what makes this film absolutely brilliant. Written by Ted Griffin and directed by Antonia Bird, this wasn’t a film that most audiences were ever going to enjoy. Carlyle himself noted that, "[b]ecause the subject matter is so gruesome and the visuals are so distasteful, there are going to be people who are not going to be too happy to watch this one,” noting it was a “hard sell.” But some of the best movies are the ones made for a specific audience, and Ravenous, absolutely, is no exception.

Second Lieutenant John Boyd is a soldier in the Mexican-American War, fighting for the U.S., but he finds he has no taste for battle. Instead he pretends to be dead, hiding among the dead, buried under their corpses. But in that pile he ends up lapping up the blood spilling on him, accidentally, and he finds that the power of that blood fuels him. He breaks free, charges out, and kills a bunch of the Mexican soldiers, taking over the command post in a huge win for the U.S. This gets him a promotion to Captain, but his superior officers also recognize that his story doesn’t hold water and the only reason he had the opportunity to even attack the compound was first because of his extreme cowardice.

So, after becoming a hero, he’s not the Army’s dirty secret. They send him to For Spencer, way out west in Nevada, with the other dirty secrets and ill-fitting soldiers of the military. He meets the rest of his new squad – David Arquette as the always high on Native grass Private Cleaves, Jeremy Davies as the overly pious Private Toffler, Neal McDonough as military nut Private Reich, and Jeffrey Jones as outpost commander Colonel Hart – and he has to get settled into his new life out in the middle of nowhere. That is until a mysterious stranger, F.W. Colqhoun (Robert Carlyle), comes to the base raving about men eating other men, and a traveling party that had fallen to cannibalism. Except his story may not be all it’s made out to be, and if the soldiers follow him out in the wilds, many of them may not return.

As observed by other critics, Ravenous is an odd mix of flavors, both vampiric and cannibalistic. On the one hand it’s a tale of humans eating the flesh of other humans, a story of cannibalism run amok. (Which… is there any other way for it to run?) At the same time, though, the film uses the mythology of the wendigo, the Native spirits that inhabit cannibals, and equates it to a kind of vampirism, the power to drain the life from another and fuel your own strength and power. These ideas are married fantastically in the film, creating a very interesting and detailed mythology without actually having to bang you over the head with any of it.

Going back and watching it again, I marveled at the efficiency of the storytelling. The opening scenes, with Boyd getting captured, drinking blood, and fighting off the Mexican forces, perfectly illustrates the power of cannibalism within the film without having to go into detail making Boyd explain the story. It also means that when an evil cannibal, Calqhoun, shows up on the scene, not much has to be explained for us to understand what’s going on. Whispers of wendigo, and the yarn that Calqhoun spins, are enough to get the film moving. It’s incredibly well executed, a great way to get the audience invested in the events.

The fact that it’s set after the Mexican-American War, out in a remote part of the country, also works to the film’s benefit. Yes, that does mean it’s a period piece and some people simply don’t want to watch period pieces. At the same time, though, that isolation is a key part of the story. You can understand how a group of people traveling across the country could get caught in a deadly winter and would resort to eating each other. You can see why a team of soldiers would go out to investigate, and wouldn’t be able to call for backup and get an airlift. This is a story that uses the period it’s set in to drive the plot, and it makes it a story that feels timeless and interesting because it wouldn’t work in a more modern setting.

The production values certainly help to sell the film. While the budget was tiny ($12 Mil being almost nothing for a Hollywood production), the film uses its money efficiently. Much of the film is set out in the wilderness or at the Fort, so the film can best set up its scenes and make them feel as real and lived in as possible. The costuming is also great, looking real (at least to my untrained eyes) and adding to the verisimilitude of the piece. The setting is perfectly encapsulated in the film, helping to sell all the scenes and never make you question the setting.

But then, I also love the tone of the film. This is a very, very dark comedy, pitch black in its tone. It’s both a gory, disgusting cannibal film while at the same time a movie that finds a way to joke and poke fun at the very idea of humans eating other humans. This works to normalize it, to make it seem like these are people that have accepted cannibalism as a way of life, and so they’re accepting and cracking wise about it. Even one of the taglines for the film, “you are who you eat,” shows the producers knew exactly the kind of film they were pitching, even if the audience didn’t get in on the joke at the time.

Naturally the cast helps the film out a lot. Pearce, fresh off acclaim for a different (but, oddly, just as bloody) period piece, L.A. Confidential, played Boyd as the conflicted hero. He doesn’t like violence, and he doesn’t want to be a cannibal, but the blood pulls at him, making him want to eat even when every part of his body is trying to resist. Carlyle, meanwhile, has a grand old time playing Calqhoun, getting to run through multiple different versions of the character, from lone survivor of a desperate party, to crazed cannibal, and more. He’s fantastic as the villain of the piece in every form he gets to play.

But more than anything, this film knows exactly what it wants to be. It’s a dark comedy wrapped up as a gory horror film, and it plays both sides like a pair of fiddles. Audiences at the time may not have been accepting of the film, but those of us that got to see it and clicked with the film knew exactly what it was doing. In the years since the film’s release it’s cult following has only grown, leading many to call it one of the best horror films ever made. It’s dark and weird and creepy as hell, and then it spikes its moments with pitch black humor. This isn’t a film for everyone, but if it was made for you then you’ll know it and you’ll love it.

So give it a try. Take a bite of the film. You might just love it.