New Year's Countdown...of Horror: 7 - The Ravenous (Les Affamés)

7
Les Affamés
2017, d. Robin Aubert - netflix

The Story (in 2 paragraphs or less)

The Ravenous, Les Affamés, or
Los Hambrientos. I'm not trying to be
confusing.

Multiple survivors of a zombie apocalypse in rural countryside (I thought it was Franch but turns out it's Quebec) find their way to each other only to be to torn apart. 

Why This?
It was my mistake.  I thought this was "Raw", about the vegetarian who becomes a cannibal.
I was bound to get to a zombie movie at some point.

What's good?
This is a "quiet" zombie film, with people who act as smartly (it's the only way they've survived this long), but the inevitability looms over them.  There are reviewers who have said the zombies represent the invasion on Francophone culture or zombification of culture in general.  Not sure I got that at all.  But I love the weird spires of stuff the zombies create.
The zombies are "fast zombies" so I imagine this to be a mutation of the 28 Days Later virus (totally not canon but could be).
The characters here are pretty great, rare for a zombie film for them to feel so grounded and non-combative with each other.

Not so good...
We don't get a sense of how long this plague has been happening.  It would be good to have a threshhold.  I also don't get how zombies operate biologically...won't they emaciate eventually, just wither away without sustenance?
And also... people are getting zombie blood spattered on them all the time... isn't that a risk for zombie virus transmission.

The bad thing
Zombies. They run fast, they get strong, and if you get bit, you become one eventually (obvs).  It's not well established how long that gestation period is.  Their weird spires (of chairs, toys or random objects) are very curious, but unexplained.

Franchise potential:
Every zombie film has franchise potential...this one would be exploring this strange spire-building behavior of theirs.  It's not like the spires in The Girl With All The Gifts  though, which worked very, very well in that story.

Did I like wtaching this?
Yeah.  As much as I'm bored with zombie movies, I really liked this one.  It seemed quieter, smarter, less interested with gore and more interested in the meticulousness of survival. Yay CanCon.

[Toasty's take- we agree]