Les affamés

The negative reviewers missed the nuanced point of this film. I am a huge dystopian post apocalyptic movie and zombie fan...and have seen most of them - even all the foreign ones. This one is refreshingly different, and I enjoyed it immensely, despite its flaws. It's not a film about surviving (such as The Walking Dead), but of just barely existing, and the tricks to the mind it plays.

The entire movie is filmed as if the viewer is in a mental dissociative dream state. Which you would be in a world such as this one. Far too many movies show unrealistic people who are always on their guard, never making mistakes, always able to survive with near super hero powers. Here we see real humans, who make inexplicable mistakes. However, this is a dissociative dream state world, we don't need the details, nor does what we see need to make any sense. There are no deep human relationships in this world...they have been destroyed. The allegory to our materialistic society is deeply amusing - as the afflicted show. There are also many realistic terrifying moments...usually quite fleeting (which makes them even more terrifying).

The musical score and photography are absolutely exquisite. The long creepy pauses, fog, deep forest, strange guttural screams, strange edits all add to a feeling of disassociation. The viewer becomes part of this surreal world. The suspense is found in the absolute quiet minimalism, the tiniest of sounds.

Too many negative reviewers whose movie goer experiences demand factual linear storytelling or action will not like this film. My take is it's an artful film I will watch several times again. Must see the reason for this dystopian world. It's alluded to after all the credits play. If you don't see it, you will never know why this world happened.

I really wanted to like this. I was highly anticipating it, and it looked absolutely awesome. Unfortunately, while the score is very appropriate and the cinematography is beautiful, there's no other reason to watch this. There's no plot. No character development. There no reasoning for anything they do or for what happens. There is a lot of silence, standing around, and making bad choices, though.

Honestly, a huge disappointment for me.

After an apocalypse where most of the population in a small location in the woods has turned into ravenous zombies, survivors join forces expecting to go to the protection of the big city. However their journey becomes hopeless when they learn what happened in other locations.

"Les affamés", a.k.a. "Ravenous", is a dismal and hopeless story of a sort of zombie apocalypse. The screenplay keeps the mystery and tension in the beginning with the lack of explanation to what is happening (and has happened). The lack of explanation why the ravenous creatures stack chairs and other objects and then stop to stare is another flaw in the story. The fool character has the intention to break the tension but is annoying indeed. In the end, "Les affamés" has a promising storyline that should (and could) have been better and better. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

This film manages well to give anxiety to the viewer even if it is very slow and without much sense accomplished to exist. The majority of the film is carried on thanks to the stupid choices of the protagonist that generate a terrible cascade effect.

I feel this movie could fade away into the myriad of zombie images if I were not to write a passage down about it. It plays out something like an episode of The Walking Dead season IV where they're on the road again. It's altogether quite serious, and yet it has some slapstick dark comedy thrown in at unexpected moments. In its quiet, subtle way, it leaves some of the most haunting, ghostly imagery imprinted on the mind, something like of a recurring dream. As in The Cured (2017), it hints at maybe a sort of pack mentality or unconscious motive shared by the zombie horde. Is there a celestial theme also suggested by the strange furniture shrines erected? Maybe the best aspect of this movie are the unanswered questions, allowing us to vicariously live the anxiety of the protagonists.