Review – Ravenous

Imagine those down-home, salt-of-the-earth, extremely boring westerns that were popular in the 70s combined with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The amazing thing is that it kinda works. The laconic pacing offsets the gore just enough to keep it interesting. The plot focuses on a skeleton crew of soldiers in pre-Civil-War California who maintain a way station during manifest destiny’s off-season. One night a stranger stumbles into camp with a story roughly resembling the saga of the notorious Donner party. Then all hell breaks loose, because it turns out that the Algonquian legends of the Wendigo (herein interpreted as people who become superhuman monsters after eating human flesh) are actually true. The script is good, and the production manages to do a lot with what must have been a relatively small budget. If only more horror movies explored new territory like this, maybe the genre as a whole wouldn’t be so dull. Worth seeing