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Josh Lewis4.0

A manifest destiny/wendigo myth cannibal horror-western that's as bleak and bloody as advertised but also has this unexpected off-beat rhythm/tone/pace to it that sometimes veers into the existential wandering of something like Jim Jarmsuch's Dead Man (including beautiful mountain landscape photography by Don’t Look Now/Candyman’s Anthony B. Richmond) and other times into this strange, absurdist comedy about American exceptionalism literally eating itself. Really impressed by the fact that this is both an unsubtle satire of American civilization built on barbaric survivalist greed + accumulating power and strength through immoral and insatiable consumption, yet also a gruesomely entertaining genre movie about Alfred Packer cowboy-soldier-vampires homoerotically arguing, cooking/eating their comrades, sword fighting, etc. Guy Pearce is so good as the anxious guilt-ridden coward willing to do just about anything to survive, and Robert Carlyle is even better as the slimy sadist cannibal who tries to convert him to his philosophy/lifestyle of disemboweling and stew-making. And what an incredible and unique score/collaboration by Michael Nyman (The Piano, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover) and Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz)?! Full discussion on ep 413 of my podcast SLEAZOIDS.

CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️3.5

Best American frontier postcolonial homoerotic cannibal folk horror western comedy for anyone who has seriously considered licking people in their sleep.

davidehrlich4.5

It may be hard to believe now, but once upon a time — call it the late Nineties — a major movie studio sunk $12 million into a comedic western about 19th century soldiers who believed eating other humans endow folks with superhuman strength and the ability to recover from life-threatening injuries. When shooting on the film crashed to a halt after three weeks of interference and executive micromanaging, one of the suits at at 20th Century Fox hit upon an idea: fire director Milcho Manchevski — the Macedonian art house sensation whose devastating wartime romance Before the Rain was nominated for an Oscar — and replace him with Raja Gosnell, whose only feature credit to date was Home Alone 3.Shockingly, it didn't work out.READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT ROLLING STONE