Cannibal Movies: Raw, Rabid, and Ravenous

Movie that aren't The Silence of the Lambs.

I’ll start by saying that cannibalism is bad. This should go without saying, but I’m about to unleash about a thousand words about movies I really like that are also about cannibalism so I’m getting the disclaimer out of the way now. People are friends, not food. 

Our cultural obsession with cannibalism says so much about us. It’s a visceral example of our most violent and sickly trespasses, and a projection of our darkest fears. We all grew up hearing about the Donner Party (if you need a refresher here’s a great podcast episode about it), and the survivors of Uruguayan Flight 571 (dramatized in last year’s The Society of Snow), who resorted to cannibalism to survive. 

Then there are the stories of those who turned to cannibalism because they wanted to. The true stories are horrific and haunting, the fictional ones are ripe with metaphor. Cannibalism is often used as a stand-in for our vices: greed, the lust for power or domination, the unwieldiness of desire, or all of the above. Cannibalism at the movies has a long and storied history, and there are countless examples of films that use it tastefully, with many more that lean on it merely for shock value. 

Today, in honor of the season and this most terrifying holiday, I want to write about three films that push the concept of cannibalism to the limits and stir the audience's appetite for carnage and mayhem. I tried not to reach for the most obvious entries into this bloody subgenre, and I wanted to pick films you can watch all year round…for whenever the craving strikes. There are some obvious and great TV examples, such as Yellow Jackets and Hannibal, but I’m choosing to stick to films for the purposes of this piece. So, without further ado, here are three films about cannibalism that aren’t The Silence of the Lambs.

WARNING: spoilers and queasiness are unintended side effects of consuming this post.

Raw (2016)

In Justine’s family everyone is a vet and a vegetarian. At 16, she’s a gifted teen ready to take on her first year in vet school, where her older sister also studies. There, she gets no time to settle: hazing starts right away. Justine is forced to eat raw meat for the first time in her life. Unexpected consequences emerge as her true self begins to form.

This is my most straightforward pick and one that got a lot of attention when it came out eight years ago. Set at an elite and secluded French veterinary academy, Raw follows Justine as she enters her first year at the school a vegetarian, and ends the year a full-blown cannibal. 

My mom CJ, who hates scary movies, loves to tell a story about going on a date with my other mom Shelley to see Alien 2 and being conned into it after Shelley described it as a “space western”. She laughs about it now, but she had nightmares for years. I feel like I had a similar experience with Raw. Except I loved it. 

If you haven’t seen it and can find a screening near you, I highly recommend seeing it for the first time with an audience. It is deeply disturbing, extremely graphic, and a very good time. Cannibalism becomes the language of desire and sexuality in this twisted coming-of-age tale, and solid performances bolster a stylish if narratively uneven debut from Ducournau. I especially liked the relationship between Justine and her older sister Alexia, who is her mentor, her tormentor, and her tempter. The sisters are deeply connected and deeply competitive, jockeying for control of each other and themselves. 

There’s also a great comment here on eating meat that reminded me a little of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). The suggestion seems to be that meat is murder, so why do we draw the line at eating each other but not, for example, pigs? I’m not a vegetarian, but maybe if I watch enough movies where characters start brutally murdering each other to get a taste, I’ll think twice before ordering a steak.

Rapid (1977)

After undergoing radical surgery for injuries from a motorcycle accident, a young woman develops a strange phallic growth on her body and a thirst for human blood—the only nourishment that will now sustain her.

I had to get a Cronenberg film in the mix. He’s the OG of body horror, a true master filmmaker, and the ultimate provocateur. This guy is still making people squirm at age 81. His career is legendary and his influence is still ricocheting through the zeitgeist. And while I’m the first to admit he isn’t always my cup of tea, I have a deep affection for his early films of the mid-late 1970s. I love their scrappy, low-budget feel, the practical effects are always incredible and surprising, and he’s really underrated when it comes to getting the best from his actors. 

In a brilliant casting decision, adult film star Marilyn Chambers plays the lead in this movie, marking her crossover into the mainstream. It’s no accident that she makes her first non-porn appearance in a horror movie, where the veil between smut and cinema is the thinnest. She’s excellent as Rose, who survives a horribly disfiguring motorcycle accident (Cronenberg has a thing for motor vehicles) and, after a botched surgery, she awakes with a freaky little appendage coming out of her armpit and a thirst for blood. As one does.

Rabid is a solid, sickening film that’s one part zombie movie, one part social commentary, and one part sexploitation flick. It’s also a pandemic movie - inarguably the scariest genre.

Ravenous (1999)

Upon receiving reports of missing persons at Fort Spencer, a remote Army outpost on the Western frontier, Capt. John Boyd investigates. After arriving at his new post, Boyd and his regiment aid a wounded frontiersman who recounts a horrifying tale of a wagon train murdered by its supposed guide -- a vicious U.S. Army colonel gone rogue. Fearing the worst, the regiment heads out into the wilderness to verify the gruesome claims.

My absolute favorite of the three, hands down, is Ravenous (1999). I saw it for the first time in a college class on film scores and it really took my breath away. With time and several rewatches under my belt, it’s become not only one of my favorite instances of cannibalism in film, it’s one of my favorite films of all time. 

Set during the Mexican-American war in the snowy California mountains, the film follows Second Lieutenant John Boyd (Guy Pearce) after he is relegated to the obscure outpost. Boyd is decorated for bravery after surviving a massacre and sneaking past enemy lines, but we quickly learn his accolades are just spin. In reality, he penetrated enemy defenses by playing dead and hiding under a stack of bleeding bodies, and his cowardice inadvertently saved his life. I love the setup for his character, it perfectly establishes so much of what this movie is about: the absurdity of war, how mass violence corrupts us, and how the military protects its reputation at all costs.

Now snowed in for the season at Fort Spencer with a rag-tag group of low-rent soldiers, a pair of Indigenous scouts, and a mysterious stranger who is not who he claims to be, Boyd soon finds himself in the ever-growing company of cannibals, and doing his utmost to resist the siren call of human flesh. The cast is superlative and includes Robert Carlyle, David Arquette, Stephen Spinella, and the great John Spencer. My only real qualm with the film is that, like Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (2021), it very obviously wasn’t shot in the United States. 

Directed by the great Antonia Bird, who tragically died at the age of sixty-two from cancer, Ravenous presents cannibalism as a clear metaphor for Manifest Destiny and uses it with stylish aplomb to condemn the ravages of colonialism. And, no surprise here, the score absolutely rips. Composed by members of the British band Blur, the soundtrack is eerily familiar - composers Michael Nyman and Damon Albarn reworked songs from the period with traditional instruments to unsettling effect.

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Credit: Each plot synopsis comes from Letterboxd via TMDb.