Ravage (2020)

Ravage is the kind of lean, feral thriller that doesn’t so much invite you in as grab you by the collar and drag you through the brush—an experience built on sensory overload, raw survival, and the sickening certainty that the wilderness can hide anything. Teddy Grennan directs with an intent to overwhelm, turning sound, silence, and sudden violence into a visceral language that lingers on your nerves long after the credits. Annabelle Dexter-Jones gives the film its beating heart as Harper, grounding the mayhem in grit and instinct, while Robert Longstreet and Bruce Dern add a grim, off-kilter menace that makes every encounter feel dangerous. Fair warning: this is not a cozy horror watch, and it contains extremely graphic animal violence, but if you want a movie that hits hard, stays tense, and leaves a strong physical impression, Ravage delivers.

Ravage wants to be a gritty, backwoods survival thriller with a “you won’t believe her until it’s too late” framing device, and it commits hard to that nastiness. The problem is it often mistakes brutality for tension, leaning on mean-spirited violence and bleakness (including a particularly upsetting animal-killing scene) instead of building suspense or characters you can fully invest in. Annabelle Dexter-Jones sells the desperation and there’s a grim, scrappy energy to the woods-and-dirt filmmaking, but the story can feel thin and the shock-first approach may leave you cold rather than thrilled. If you’re sensitive to graphic cruelty, especially toward animals, or you prefer smart, twisty thrillers over endurance-test horror, this is one to skip.