YMMV / Ravenous (1999)

• Adorkable:
  • Colonel Hart is a nebbish, awkward bookworm who seems totally unfit for military command, but his shy geekiness really stands out in the film, especially among his more Jacksonian comrades.
  • Private Toffler is a little weird and quirky, to be sure, but he's also friendly and enthusiastic as well as passionate about his work, making the viewer hope nothing bad happens to him.
• Awesome Music: Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman's score, particularly when Boyd and Reich are chasing Colqhoun/Ives through the woods. The track title on the CD is literally "Let's Go Kill That Bastard."
• Cult Classic: While it came and went during its initial release, it found its own niche and highly dedicated audience once released on home media and continues to have the following decades later.
• Complete Monster: Colonel Ives is a cannibalistic soldier who learns of the Wendigo myth and decides to try it because he's dying and has nothing to lose. The myth was true; Ives is cured of his tuberculosis and depression. He takes a wagon train into the mountains and leads it astray so he can slaughter and eat everyone else. To kick off the main plot, he assumes the identity of "Reverend Colqhoun" and lures more soldiers to the spot so he can eat them too, sadistically chasing one terrified man down before gutting him with a knife. When he returns to the fort, having killed everyone who could recognize him except for Captain John Boyd, Ives plans to encourage Boyd down his (already started) path to cannibalism and therefore have someone to help him get away with killing people. Revealing his intent to create a cannibal ruling class with himself at the top as a messianic figure, Ives is a representation of the predatory evils of Manifest Destiny and the savagery in human nature.
• Critical Dissonance: Audiences (the few who actually saw it when it came out) generally rated the film higher than critics did. Roger Ebert was a notable exception among critics for giving the film a mostly positive review.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Blood pours down the screen, people do despicable things, yet one can't help but think, "why is this so damn funny?" The secret's in the score. It is particularly prominent in the scene where Ives is chasing down Toffler to slaughter and eat him, but the background music is an incredibly silly banjo track with yodeling.
  • Hart saying "Well, isn't this civilized?" as he and Ives chow down on the stew made out of Major Knox while Boyd is bleeding out and losing consciousness, his nose dripping blood and his eyes crossed. It's one of the darkest scenes in the film (especially what happens almost immediately after), but the levity cuts the tension like a well-placed lawn dart and becomes darkly hilarious.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Colonel Hart, a Nice Guy and Deadpan Snarker who gets one of the most compelling arcs and is played by one of the film's better-known actors.
  • The gung-ho Private Reich, who despite being a Sociopathic Soldier genuinely tries very hard to stop Ives after he kills Toffler and George and might have succeeded were it not for Boyd's sluggishness on the draw.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Many have pointed out that Toffler seems to be either neurodivergent-coded or is supposed to be actually neurodivergent, leading many to suggest that he's somewhere on the autism spectrum due to his weird, stilted behavior and hyperfixation on religion.
• Faux Symbolism:
  • Theres a lot of Christ references surrounding Ives which don't make a lot of sense and not even the director or the actor can satisfactorily explain. For example:
  • One of the Magical Native Americans makes a tenuous connection made between cannibalism and communion when asked about the Wendigo myth; inferring that both their cultures see consuming human flesh as a means of gaining strength/health/life, but the "savages" are the ones who see it as a curse as opposed to a blessing.
    White man eats the body of Jesus Christ every Sunday.
  • Ives spends the climax with the sign of the cross made in blood on his forehead for no reason and with no explanation. If anything, it symbolises exactly the opposite of what Ives would like to say about himself; A visible cross on the forehead evokes Ash Wednesday, when the sign reminds the bearer that they are made from dust and will die. One possible explanation is that Ives sees himself as a god, and his attempts to found a cannibal colony that he leads can be analogous to Christ gathering his disciples.
• Funny Moments:
  • HE WAS LIIIIICKING ME!
  • Ives steals a gun and tries to shoot Toffler with it... only for the gun to jam.
    Ives: That is sooooo annoying. (Places his coat on the dying Col. Hart) Run. (Cue goofy banjo music)
  • Ives corners Boyd on a cliff, and Boyd, rather than fight Ives, jumps off the cliff. Ives' response is one of sheer bewilderment.
  • Half of everything Col. Hart says is hilarious, thanks to him being a Deadpan Snarker par excellence.
  • Our introduction to Cleaves and Reich.
• Ho Yay: Boyd and Ives get a lot of it. The way Ives describes the Horror Hunger they share has a lot of sexual undertones to it, especially when Boyd cuts his hand and he tries to entice Boyd with its smell, which is very reminicient of him talking dirty to Boyd in order to arouse him. Then there's their final confrontation which is loaded with innuendo (note that they both attack each other with thrusting weapons amidst each other's heavy grunting and moaning) and they both die embracing each other after being caught in Boyd's Bear Trap in a way reminiscent of a post-coitus cuddle.
• Jerkass Woobie: Boyd is a Dirty Coward, but his blatant PTSD, the suffering he goes through throughout the film, and how everyone in the camp with the exception of Col. Hart hates him, it’s hard not to feel bad for him.
• Nightmare Fuel: As funny as the film is, it is a horror movie at heart:
  • Colqhoun's story, which, with minimal visuals and mostly consisting of dialogue, manages to be one of the most chilling in the film.
    Colqhoun: When I stepped inside that cave... the smell of meat cooking... I thanked the Lord.
    • Even worse considering it was all a a ploy to get sympathy in order to bring more victims to Ives' Cannibal Larder.
  • Sudden shift into hilarious banjo music chase scene notwithstanding, Ives' insane look as he starts towards the rest of the party and his subsequent massacre of them all with no remorse. Then...
    Ives: (stepping towards Toffler with a knife) Run.
  • Toffler's demise, his chest torn open, exposing his ribs. Yeesh.
• Special Effect Failure: When the party is heading to the cave, there's a shot of them walking through the woods, where Colqhoun slips on a patch of snow. The patch then lifts off the ground and slides a few inches, as it's actually a swatch of cotton. This effect is only really used for wide or fleeting shots, though, and every other shot with characters walking through the snow has much more realistic effects.

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