He moved only when the wind gusted, masking his footsteps.

The most compelling aspect of the original 2003 film and its direct sequels is the biological justification for the monsters. The cannibals are not born evil; they are made . The films posit that decades of toxic chemical dumping by greedy corporations into the mountain water supply led to severe genetic mutations and sociopathy in the isolated hill communities. This origin story transforms the cannibals from simple hillbillies into avenging forces of nature. They are the literal, rotting consequence of industrialization. When wealthy, college-educated protagonists stumble through the woods, they are not just prey; they are stand-ins for a consumerist society that poisoned the land and then looked away. The cannibals’ consumption of human flesh is a horrific inversion of capitalism’s consumption of natural resources: the land finally devours the intruders.