Ravenous (original title Les affamés), is a Canadian, French language zombie horror film directed and written by Robin Aubert (Saint Martyrs of the Damned). In the past I had a girlfriend who insisted on having a film playing in the background when she slept at night, I came to recognise certain films that I was able to sleep to, due to how quiet they were, and this one would fit the bill, as throughout the characters are virtually silent. It makes for a slow burn horror, but one where there is actually a lot going on.
The movie takes place in rural Canada, where some weeks or months previously there had been a devastating viral outbreak. Those infected became violently deranged, with a thirst for non-infected human flesh. Bonin (Marc-André Grondlin) is one of the few survivors, and after meeting up with a woman, Tania (Monia Chokri) and a young girl, Zoé (Charlotte St-Martin), they eventually join with a few other survivors at a farmhouse. Knowing that a herd of infected are coming their way, they decide to head even deeper into the wooded countryside, with the intention of making it to an old bunker that is situated there.
With the whispered way the protagonists speak, this had a vibe of A Quiet Place to it, often the characters say more with looks and gestures, than by actual dialogue. I liked that these characters worked together well, and don't hesitate when hard decisions have to be made, though it did also mean a lot of them were blank slates. The world is a bleak and hopeless place, with death around every corner. The core cast lose a lot of their members over the one hour forty five minute run time, and there is a sense of resolute acceptance for their chances of survival. Grondlin was the highlight of the movie, and for a character who barely speaks he became someone I really came to be rooting for. I also loved that a character dubs him 'the cornball comic' due to his way of telling terrible jokes as a way to break tension, even if he only does this on a handful of occasions, while looking as miserable as sin while he does this. The body count among the small cast is quite deep, with not even the younger characters spared from gruesome zombie attack.
The characters felt believable, but there were a couple of moments that felt silly. One of these is the recurring figure of a 'village idiot' type man, someone who keeps popping up in the most random of locations, leaping out at the survivors and screaming in order to prank them, completely oblivious to the apocalypse that is going on in the area around him. That at least leads up to a fun payoff. I also thought a character who appears at the very end was slightly ridiculous, even if that does link up the short prologue (set at a pre-apocalypse racetrack) with the rest of the movie.
The zombies fall into the infected category, they run, and while headshots kill them straight away, they also respond to trauma on other areas of the body, rather than be undead creatures who don't feel pain. They are also very weird acting. For the most part Ravenous feels like it is set in the 28 Days Later universe, but the infected, when they are not pursuing non-infected get up to some strange things. Mainly they stand or lay around in The Girl with All the Gifts style, but they also build strange towers made out of chairs, children's toys, and any other junk they can get their hands on. Completely unexplained, but it makes for a surreal vibe which plays into some tense scenes. There are several thrilling sequences when the heroes find themselves pursued by the infected, including a great running battle through dense woodland, and a creepy part that takes place in a misty field. Was also cool that the infected seem to work together, their screams alerting others nearby to their location, and they even appear to set traps at point.
That the film (outside of the prologue) picks up quite a few weeks into the outbreak, with characters completely clued in to what is happening, makes for a mysterious film. With no explanation for how the event happened, and with bleak and depressed characters not really having any hope for their own survival, I found this morose and sad film engaging, especially when the somewhat stale notion of other survivors being the real enemy not factoring into the story. With some lovely special effects (a highlight being a shotgun blast to an infected man's head), and a great cast, Ravenous was a good entry in the crowded zombie genre, even if the overall plot left something to be desired. Ravenous can currently be found on Netflix.
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