1) No movie that features character actor Jeffrey Jones can be all bad. 2) No movie that features cannibalism as its main plot device can be all bad. 3) Any movie that features the distended, festering corpse of 1-800-CALLATT spokesidiot David Arquette not once but twice is inherently good.
Essentially, the plot is a simple one. During the Mexican-American war, Captain John Boyd (played by Guy Pearce) single-handedly takes over an enemy fort. He is decorated for this act because of its importance. However, it happened because he froze in battle and played dead, and was carted off to the fort with other dead soldiers. As a "reward" for his "bravery," Boyd is sent to a remote fort in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which is manned by a skeleton crew. The fort is manned by other rejects, including a drunk and a loco-weed-crazed cook, so Boyd fits right in.
During Boyd's time at the fort, a Scottish traveler named Colqhoun (played menacingly by Robert Carlyle) appears, half-crazed and half-starved. He tells a tale of a wagon train that was ravaged by weather and trapped without food. Unable to survive any other way, the people resorted to cannibalism, urged by the leader of the party, a military man named Ives. He leads the men of the fort back to the cave where his wagon train was holed up, both to rescue survivors and to destroy the wicked Ives, who by all accounts was a very enthusiastic cannibal. Before they go, Boyd is warned by several Native Americans at the fort of the Wendigo--an ancient curse that states when a man eats the flesh of another man, he steals his strength, effectively becoming a vampire. Once someone has started down the path, there's no return, and his hunger will continue to grow.
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