Review: The Revenant
After a three-year wait, festival favorite The Revenant finally hits theaters today in a limited release that includes Austin. Director D. Kerry Prior won the Best Director Award at Fantastic Fest in 2009 (my podcast interview). At the time Prior mentioned he still had the challenge of securing distribution for his feature as well as finalizing visual effects. After a successful festival run, Prior re-cut portions of The Revenant to tighten up this dark comedy. The final cut enhances the darkness of this genre-defying film while ensuring its placement in the hall of "must-see" movies of the undead nature.
The Revenant centers around Bart Gregory (David Anders), a soldier who is killed in Iraq during a nighttime ambush. Bart is laid to rest as his best friend Joey (Chris Wylde) and girlfriend Janet (Louise Griffiths) mourn his death ... only it turns out that Bart isn't done with living. He reunites with Joey, who helps him make the best of his undead state. What ensues is an oddball execution of securing blood for Bart to consume so that he can "survive" as a non-glamorous and moldering walking corpse referred to as a revenant. After stumbling into a convenience store hold-up, the duo decide to kill two birds with one stone by taking out criminals in LA including drug dealers, rapists and robbers.
Prior pulls from his background in special effects to deliver great horror by relying very little on CGI and mostly on digital compositing. Practical effects were implemented as well. One particular visual effect early in The Revenant that had me cringing even during a second viewing is that of an embalmed Bart cutting through the threads of his stitched lips.
Prior's dark sense of humor as well as his personal experience of male bonding comes out in this film. The romance is not really about the relationship between the neglected Janet and Bart, but rather the less-than-perfect bromance between Bart and Joey. The camaraderie between Anders and Wylde makes their bond even more realistic. A montage of the undead crusaders cleaning the streets of its criminal element is slightly reminiscent of The Boondock Saints.
The re-cut of The Revenant is significant enough that anyone who saw this movie during its festival run should definitely watch it again. An opening scene as well as other material that was added in significantly contribute to Bart and Joey's story. At 110 minutes, the film moves along at a fairly reasonable pace although a few scenes could have benefited from a bit more trimming. Despite this small concern, The Revenant still balances the dark comedy with the horror of being undead in the city of LA where the living seem less alive.