RAVENOUS (2017)

Been a bit since we’ve had a good ‘ol fashion zombie movie review so figure it’s time to do so. We end that drought with Netflix’s RAVENOUS. Ravenous is a French language film (with English sub-titles) that originated in Canada. I’m always excited to view foreign films as usually I’m not too familiar with the actors involved, thus giving it that extra sense of ‘anything can happen to anyone.’ This is especially true with the horror genre. The film starts off by introducing several characters at different locations, where eventually they intersect, and all must team up to fight some ongoing zombie epidemic. We get the usual sense of paranoia, trust issues and sense of dread that usually accompanies a decent zombie flick. Where this flick excels is the tone and ongoing tension that is present from the very first frame. You won’t get many jokes (except for the couple one liners two men are telling one another in the opening minutes), laughter, or lightheartedness. This is a serious tone throughout the whole thing. Granted I did laugh at one scene involving a practical joke gone wrong, but I wasn’t sure it was intentional. There isn’t really an ultimate end goal for the characters…other than to just survive and keep moving. There isn’t some ‘magic location’ or magic artifact’ that will suddenly stop all the madness. One unique thing that sets this apart from other zombie flicks is the ‘shrine’ of objects that seems to be the point of interest for the zombies to give their attention to. This isn’t really explained much in the movie, so some of it is left up to interpretation. It’s a decent flick to check out, as the foreign film aspect lends to not knowing what will happen to whom (if you’re not familiar with the cast), but a jarring ending and couple things left unexplained take it down a notch or two. Check it out for your zombie fix…you might be surprised either way.

SLASH SCENE: The forest in the beginning…

SLASH SCORE: 3.5/5