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Captain John Boyd
Captain John Boyd
- Played By: Guy Pearce
The film's protagonist, a veteran of the Mexican-American War who's plagued by PTSD, cowardice and general combat incompetence.
In the war, he gets a Medal of Dishonor after playing dead and subsequently capturing the enemy command post. The "reward" for his behavior in battle is reassignment to the skeleton crew in the remote Fort Spencer.
- Being Evil Sucks: A coward he may be, but a bad man he is not.
- Buried in a Pile of Corpses: The ploy that lets Boyd get into Trapped Behind Enemy Lines prior to the film's start.
- Cassandra Truth: No-one believes Boyd'd story, which leads to much death.
- Classical Anti-Hero: His major flaw is his cowardice.
- Dirty Coward: Boyd knows it and the people around him know it.
- Dying as Yourself: He chooses to die instead of eating Ives and continuing the cycle of cannibalism.
- Fake Ultimate Hero: He won a medal for bravely fainting in the face of danger.
- He Who Fights Monsters: Boyd, who has to become a cannibal for a chance to defeat Ives.
- Medal of Dishonor: As Boyd quips, his medal is "for cowardice".
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: His experiences in the Mexican-American War, particularly him being buried under a mountain of corpses, have clearly left him with severe PTSD.
- Taking You with Me: This is how Boyd is finally able to kill Ives.
- Took a Level in Badass: Boyd spends the entire film as the designated wimp (even admitting that he won his medal for cowardice), but in the end he decides to fight Ives, using all of his new cannibal superpowers.
Colonel Hart
Colonel Hart
- Played By: Jeffrey Jones
The cynical, world-weary commander of Fort Spencer.
- Benevolent Boss: He's a fairly kind, and encouraging commander and leads his men into the field.
- Deadpan Snarker: Though he's revealed to be more Stepford Snarker in the end. When he first runs down the personnel situation at Fort Spencer to Boyd, (telling him how the drunken Major Knox is the one who plays doctor if they need someone to do so, and Cleaves the stoner is the local chef) he gives us this gem:"My advice to you: don't get sick. I'd say don't eat, but then again most of us have to."
- Minion with an F in Evil: After being force-fed flesh and converted into cannibal, he is utterly disgusted by what he's become and half-hearted in his service to Ives.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: The circumstances are unclear, but he bitterly notes that being sent to Fort Spencer wasn't exactly a reward for him.
- Took A Levelin Badass: In his first scene, Hart cracks walnut shells under a giant book, but in a later scene, is able to crush them with his bare hands.]] All through the magic of cannibalism.
Reverend Colquhoun
Reverend F.W. Colquhoun
- Played By: Robert Carlyle
A Scottish priest who was part of the ill-fated expedition headed by Colonel Ives. For more information on his true persona, see Ives's folder.
Colonel Ives
Colonel Ives
"You know, Ben Franklin once said, ‘eat to live, don’t live to eat.’"
- Played By: Robert Carlyle
A soldier suffering from an untreatable case of tuberculosis, Ives was told about the legend of the Wendigo by a Native American Scout. Ives thanked the scout by eating him, and seeing that the legend was true, used an expedition to claim plenty more victims. Ives then turned his eyes to Fort Spencer, hoping to set up a clan of cannibals there with him as their leader.
- Big Bad: Ives is the ultimate antagonist of the film, having eaten six people in the mountains (and who knows how many more elsewhere) and attempts to establish a Cannibal Clan at Fort Spencer so that he can have a never-ending supply of human meat to choose from the settlers passing through.
- Cannibalism Superpower:
- After Ives ate his colleagues to survive, he's granted Super-Strength, a Healing Factor, and it cures disease as well. It also acts as a drug that makes heroin seem about as addictive as artificial sweetener.
- Ives also implies that cannibals become sexually potent, though that might just be him making up for lost time after regaining his health. He was in bad shape (as in, on death's door due to tuberculosis) before he started eating people.
- Colonel Badass: An evil version. But, Ives is one hell of a fighter.
- Faux Affably Evil: Ives is an irredeemable cannibalistic monster, but he’s very charismatic and weirdly likable.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: More like "Determinator Cannot Comprehend Coward". Ives is visibly shocked that Boyd would jump to seemingly certain death rather than stay and try to fight for his only real chance at survival. Note that Boyd really was committing suicide, and the fact that he lived was pure luck.
- Evil Colonialist: When Ives's true plan is revealed, Manifest Destiny ends up morally equated with cannibalism. He compares America's unerring expansion westward as a Horror Hunger that the country needs to sate in order to survive.
- Evil Tastes Good: Ives certainly thinks so, especially given his state before he turned to the dark temptations.
- Graceful Loser: Ives is surprisingly graceful and complimentary when he realizes that Boyd has lured him into a fatal trap.That was... really... sneaky.
- Hemo Erotic: Ives has a thing for blood, and doesn't mind it being splashed all over him (including his face) at all.
- Laughably Evil: Whenever he’s not making the audience scream, he’s making them laugh.
- Manly Man: A very dark example. Ives is an incredibly strong, ruggedly handsome and charismatic fellow, but he got all of it by eating more than a half-dozen other people, something the subtext of the film uses to draw a connection between him and the idea that Real Men Eat Meat.
- Real Men Eat Meat: He is a stealth criticism of this mindset. Ives literally becomes stronger the more people he eats, to the point where his morality has vanished and he considers humans as livestock for him to feast upon. This is meant to draw a dark parallel between Ives' reprehensibility and the dehumanization of nonhuman animals (especially those that we eat) in real life.
Private Cleaves
Private Cleaves
- Played By: David Arquette
A perpetually stoned soldier who serves as the chef.
- Advertised Extra: The admittedly inaccurate trailers and the posters make it look like he has a much larger role than he actually has, likely due to him being played by David Arquette.
- Killed Offscreen: Colonel Hart cuts him open while everyone else is distracted and sticks him on top of the fort.
- The Stoner: He spends all of his screentime stoned out of his mind.
Major Knox
Major Knox
- Played By: Stephen Spinella
The alcoholic resident doctor at Fort Spencer.
- The Alcoholic: As Colonel Hart puts it, he never met a bottle he didn’t like.
- Closest Thing We Got: He is the doctor at Fort Spencer because he has the most medical experience out of all the men. Unfortunately, it happens that horses fall more under his area of expertise than people do.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He knocks Boyd out with one punch after thinking he'd killed Cleaves.
Private Reich
Private Reich
- Played By: Neal McDonough
A disturbed soldier who takes his duties very seriously. Perhaps a little too seriously.
- Ax-Crazy: Reich is more than a little unstable.
- Chase Scene: He briefly starts one by leading Boyd in pursuit of Ives/Colquhuon (as well as trying to rescue Toffler, who has been chased into the forrest by the cannibal).
- Deadpan Snarker: Boyd’s incompetence tends to bring this out in him.
- Disney Villain Death: He falls off a cliff after Ives hits him with a hatchet, though he lives for a short while afterwards.
- Everyone Has Standards: Reich, despite being a hardened and ruthless soldier, is visibly horrified when he sees the remains of Ives's victims.
- Morality Pet: Toffler seems to be the only person at the fort he truly cares about.
- Oh, Crap!: He is horrified when, while counting the number of bodies in the cave, he realizes that there's one more than Colquhoun claimed, and that Colquhoun is the cannibal.
- Sociopathic Soldier: He bathes in ice cold water, threatens to kill Colquhoun multiple times even before he realizes he is the killer, and he at one point threatens to kill Boyd for making noise while walking through the cave. (Although to be fair he did think that there might be a cannibal in there who it was absolutely vital to sneak up on). Deleted scenes also show that he was once an officer but was demoted and transferred to Fort Spencer because he not only refused to order a retreat in a bad situation but also shot a fellow officer who suggested doing so.
- The World's Expert (on Getting Killed): The only soldier at Fort Spencer who takes his military duties seriously is easily taken out by Ives with a thrown knife and a tumble off a cliff.
Private Toffler
Private Toffler
- Played By: Jeremy Davies
A religious soldier who longs to create a new religious hymn.
- Morality Pet: To Reich.
- Token Religious Teammate: The only religious soldier at Fort Spencer.
George
George
- Played By: Joseph Runningfox
A local Native American who lives at Fort Spencer along with his sister Martha, and spends most of his time getting high with Cleaves.
Martha
Martha
- Played By: Sheila Tousey
A quiet local Native American who lives at Fort Spencer along with her brother George.
General Slauson
General Slauson
- Played By: John Spencer
A decorated general who occasionally pokes his head around Fort Spencer when circumstances require it.
