Month of Horror - Day Four: Ravenous

"He was licking me!"

This is what Guy Pearce looks like to me. No matter how many Guy Pearce movies I watch, he never looks familiar. The Hurt Locker, Rescue Dawn, Memento, L.A. Confidential, etc. I've seen them all. I just couldn't pick this guy out of a lineup. Honestly, if Guy Pearce murdered my mom right in front of me, I wouldn't bother calling the police. What would I tell them? "The most forgetable actor of all time might have just killed my mom."

Tonight, Whitney chose Ravenous, a period piece/cannibal flick that stars what's his name. After watching it, I'm in no better position to name my dear mother's attacker than I was before.America's most repected and reliable source for film criticism, the IMDB message board, contained the following quote from a Mr. or Mrs. "lilacblossom89:" "I've always thought of Ravenous as a horror film for people who don't like horror films." The point lilacblossom89 was trying to make is that Ravenous doesn't play out like your typical scary movie. First off, there's no teenagers, high school parties, or summer camps. What you get instead is a Mexican/American War backdrop, upbeat banjo music, and Jeffrey Jones.

Will horror fans enjoy Ravenous? The smart ones will. If all you're looking for from the genre is the Prom Night remake, possibly in 3-D, then keep moving. But if enjoy well-written scripts, BAFTA worthy acting performances, and the band Blur, then this is the movie for you. The music alone makes Ravenous worth watching. Damon Albarn (Blur's frontman) and Michael Nyman (a frequent collaborator of Peter Greenaway) worked on supplying the movie with a truly unqiue score.

The action doesn't disappoint either. When a group of military men face off against a cannibalistic Windigo, the blades fly and the bodies tumble. What's annoying (and this is going to give some stuff away, so tread carefully) is how every actor I had a vested interest in gets killed off early on. Then I'm stuck with That One Guy and David Arquette. But the movie stays interesting, exciting, actually, and what I thought would be a boring Thriller of Long Ago proves itself to be an underrated addition to the Movies I'd Recommend list.