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80Though it definitely requires a strong stomach, Ravenous may be the best cannibal tragicomedy ever made.
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80Has all the ingredients for a cult film success but most definitely is not for everyone. It's stylish, sophisticated, venturesome--to say the least.
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78Bird's grim, picture-perfect direction -- the Sierras are more character than backdrop, and everything else looks like it's already been digested and expelled -- augments what is frankly a small, albeit lusterless, gem of a horror show, for once with as many smarts as body parts.
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75Clever in the way it avoids most of the cliches of the vampire movie by using cannibalism, and most of the cliches of the cannibal movie by using vampirism. It serves both dishes with new sauces.
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70Although the hinges connecting the film's elements -- slapstick, political satire, thriller, gross-out shots -- sometimes squeak loudly, they hold the movie together nicely.
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70At its best when it’s least overtly allegorical--and fortunately that’s most of the time.
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63Unfortunately, much of the skill and craft evident during the first hour evaporate during the second, when mayhem and bloodshed supplant legitimate scares and intelligent writing.
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50For about half its length, Ravenous is a fairly effective scare picture, with a laugh or two. Then it just goes sour and pretentious. [19 March 1999, Friday, p.D]
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50Bird's keen visual imagination keeps the action grimly watchable.
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50An eccentric historical horror tale whose blackly comic tone wavers distracting.
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50Ravenous loses resonance as it proceeds.
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50A potentially strong cast makes its way in deadly earnest through material that's often better suited to a Monty Python skit.
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Oddball period tale of cannibalistic shenanigans.
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40I'd like to recommend it, but it's too silly. On the plus side, it's ravishingly well directed by Antonia Bird.
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40Essentially approaches its subject seriously, but does take stabs both at horror and grotesque comedy, neither with much success.
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38This movie is a howler as well -- possibly even intentionally -- but if it is a black comedy, the joke is overextended by far too many arms and legs. [19 March 1999, Life, p. 13E]
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38It's not really serious, not especially funny, and not noticeably scary. Strikeout.
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You don't want to see this bilge. Director Milcho Manchevski, who was fired in midproduction, is the only one with cause to celebrate.
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25In concept alone, Ravenous is anything but appetizing, but in execution it's worse than you'd imagine.
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20Don't go to this movie on a full stomach. Better yet, don't go.
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20Do not be concerned if laughter trickles out of the scary parts or boredom creeps into the funny parts; this is to be expected.
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20The film is one of those accursed self-styled "outrageous" comedies that play the horrific for broad laughs, with a comically inflated style of dialogue that's so hip one doubts it could have been conceived before 1997, much less 1847.