Ravenous (a.k.a. Les Affamés) (2017) 1h 44m

Do you like Cormac McCarthy?  In particular did you like The Road?  Do you wish that rather than the strange Mad Max raiders he put in there that the big bad were some sort of zombie/cannibal?  Do you also want it all presented to you in Canadian French?  Then brother I have a film for you!

Ravenous takes place in rural Quebec where a viral outbreak has turned people into a zombie-like state with a craving for flesh.  Our story focuses on a single man that tells jokes like your drunk uncle at a wedding.  He exists to lose his friend, gain a new female friend, acquire a small child, and join another small group of survivors.  Who lives?  Who dies?  Who was at risk of falling asleep during this movie?  Spoilers: The answer to the last one is me!

I'm not saying Ravenous is a bad film, it's just slow.  It's slower than most films I've complained about being slow.  Even when we're faced with someone fighting the infected it's not enough to get the adrenaline pumping.  This isn't helped by the generic attempts at getting the audience to establish a personal interest or connection with these characters.

Then I have my personal complaint with this film.  The woman that takes on the "mother" role of our group carries an accordion with her almost everywhere.  I own an accordion and let me tell you that those mother fuckers are heavy.  There is no way in hell I would consider carrying it on my back in an armageddon situation.

I do appreciate the personality of this film's infected.  They retained enough intelligence to be able to set traps as well as have an almost communal or pack mentality.  They don't overexert themselves by chasing prey until they drop and they work together.  They aren't perfect.  We get a few scenes of them just standing in a field waiting for something to catch their eye, but it's progress.

I give Ravenous 1.5 accordions out of 5:

Here Alone (2016) 1h 38m

About 10 years ago I was working for a city library system.  One of my co-workers had just finished reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road and suggested it to me on the grounds that he thought I would like it and he wanted someone to discuss it with.  He was wrong on the first part and my biggest complaint was that the book had a repeating pattern of "nothing but us/oh shit! danger/nothing but us/etc."  I bring this up because today's film was like a shittier version of me reading that book.

Here Alone is a post-zombie-apocalypse film where our female protagonist is the surviving member of her family.  We get flashbacks of her learning outdoorsman (outdoorswoman?) techniques from her husband and brief moments of what happened (viral outbreak) but mostly this is just the lady of the woods eating worms and pissing in buckets.  Eventually a man and his step-daughter end up in the film in an attempt to break up the fact that now it's just three people in the woods, but whatever.  There's a brief heel turn which I think is because the step-daughter has a lady boner for her not-dad but I might be writing my on narrative into this film out of boredom.

There's not much here.  I think we see a total of three zombies and one just looks like he's a metal head swinging his hair around to some thrash.  I wish the only person in this entire film was the woman to really push that feeling of self-survival.  Otherwise there is nothing to write about, or watch, or care about here.  Just the lady of the woods covering herself in dookie and dumping buckets of piss on herself.  So if you have filth fetishes, then this film is for you.

I give Here Alone 0 copies of The Bad Movie Bible out of 5: