Ravenous (2017)

directed by Robin Aubert

Canada

103 minutes

3.5 stars out of 5

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I choose my zombie movies carefully these days, as the genre has become so oversaturated with trash that it's hard to find good ones. Even the ones with a reputation for being artsy and slow can just feel overdone after a while. Ravenous enters the canon of zombie films as something different: still reliant on zombies and still definitely a Zombie Movie, not having a narrow enough focus to be entirely character-driven (like Cargo, or possibly It Stains The Sands Red), but also being slowly-paced and meticulous in its worldbuilding. It gets bleaker and bleaker, starting out looking like it could even possibly be a comedy, but ending on a note of loss and sacrifice, although with the possibility of solace still there.

I think that worldbuilding I just mentioned might be my favorite thing about this film, and I hesitate to even call it worldbuilding because that seems to imply a fantasy world, and while zombies aren't exactly realistic, their mere appearance in a film doesn't necessitate that the rest of the film be unbelievable. Whatever we're calling it, the way the environment is depicted in Ravenous is what makes it stand out from the crowd: This is a rural Quebec that should be calm and beautiful but has unfortunately been disrupted by the end of the world. The timeframe is soon enough after the end that everything still looks like the humans just took a quick break, but enough time has passed that the survivors seem somewhat jaded. It's also soon enough that there's still people hiding out here and there who've managed to survive, even vulnerable individuals- like small children, and kittens- but the start of the film has all the main characters separated, only to form their ragtag band as time progresses. Again, I hesitate even to classify this as a ragtag-band-of-survivors type of movie, because the people are disparate and don't feel like they have anything in common whatsoever. They don't really sit and chat, they don't insta-bond, some of them truly seem to not like each other. It's a way different feeling from the typical group of survivors you see in zombie movies, and I liked that difference.

(However I am not a tremendous fan of the fact that the sole black character is killed within ~30 minutes, and the trauma of witnessing his death is mostly used as a touchstone for a white character's backstory rather than a tragedy on its own.)

In addition to not getting the full backstories of each of the characters, we also don't get backstory on the zombies. There's a scene where one of them explains to another, still tied to a bed to make sure her "dog bite" isn't anything worse, the slow progression of the infection and how she'll feel if she's lying and is really zombie-bit instead of dog-bit, and honestly, it sounded like how I might berate someone for not wearing a mask during a pandemic. The description is not scientific but is based off of what is clearly secondhand knowledge- you feel weird, you vomit blood, you become disoriented and next thing you know you're devouring your loved ones. I can tell that the zombie apocalypse was taking place on a personal level for all of these people, and that's the way it was depicted on film.

The zombies themselves are extremely interesting. One of the things that isn't explained is that they seem to be building these huge piles of household items like chairs and small appliances, and if that was ever theorized about by the living characters, I missed it. It's a fascinating element, though; it recalls some of the consumerism critique of George Romero but is mysterious enough that you don't know what it means. Their humanity is preserved, in a rare case where survivors are clearly traumatized by having to kill people who used to be their peers. And they are genuinely terrifying- also a rarity for a zombie film given the prevalence of the genre. I finally got around to watching this based off of chatter from my book group, and I'm glad I did, because it is a well-rounded, well-made film.