Ravenous

Saw Ravenous (thanks, Anne!) It was a western/horror about a Donner Party-style disaster which ends in cannibalism. This event is tied to the myth of the Wendigo, an evil spirit of cannibalism. It's sort of reminiscent of some vampire films I've seen, with a powerful enemy circling around our heroes, always smugly and smilingly just out of reach, who must be taken down by a good guy with similar "powers." Nicely, the supernatural aspects of the story are kept in the realm of believability, so no one is jumping 40 feet in the air or bending steel or any such nonsense. The social breakdown associated with cannibalism is also mined here for claustrophobic atmosphere. A good, uncomfortable film.

There's a lot of symbolism on display here, much of it obvious enough that I caught it. The frontiersman's coats are blue on the outside and red on the inside and yet somehow when they're being particularly bloodthirsty, their coat always gets flipped around somehow, showing the red side. Also of course there's a heavy theme of food. We open with one of the characters, a soldier, contemplating a very rare steak and flashing back to old battles, where meat did fly. The final showdown even ends with a person caught in a bear trap, it's metal teeth looking very mouth-like.

Not a bad film but it didn't really grab me. Perhaps if I'd been watching it at the dead of night in the middle of winter it would be more effective. It was very morbid however and frustrating in the way horror films cultivate. Unusually well-grounded in gold-rush era costumes and set but a horror film underneath it all in the end.