Ravenous

Antonia Bird must be hungry for flack from Catholics: Priest, her 1994 film about a gay cleric, earned howls of protests, and her new Ravenous shows no signs of her being penitent. She's muted the religious and gay themes in this fusion of Night of the Living Dead and Interview with the Vampire by way of Dances with Wolves, but under the guise of a standard slasher flick they curdle all the more exuberantly. The result is neither flesh nor fowl -- it won't satisfy the appetites of horror fans or art-film aficionados -- but is worth seeing, if only for its moments of twisted inspiration, an uncanny soundtrack by Michael Nyman and Blur's Damon Albarn, and a lip-smacking performance by Robert Carlyle.

Carlyle plays Colqhoun, a bearded scarecrow found near-frozen by the six flakes manning an Army outpost in the Sierra Nevada in 1847. He has a terrible Donner Party tale to tell of escape from snowbound pioneers turned cannibalistic, and when he leads a rescue party back to the vulval cave where it all happened, he has a nasty surprise in store for them. In fact, it could be nastier and more surprising, and though Guy Pearce as an officer with a few skeletons in his closet adds an edge of madness and homoerotic intrigue, all the brooding about the eucharist and western expansion proves a teasing garnish on a disappointing entree. At the Holiday, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.
-- Peter Keough