Cannibal

Here we have another gross-out exploitation flick. This one is based on a true story. Do you remember hearing about a guy who posted an ad online looking for someone to eat? If not, look it up. A homosexual man wanted to meet up with a fellow homosexual to fuck and eat. But it had to be a willing participant. Apparently, some folks associate cannibalism with sexual gratification. And I thought that I was a pervert (hell, I'm icked out by anything involving an anus). Sure enough, someone stepped up to the plate and offered to be gormandized. That's what Cannibal is about.

In hindsight, I don't know what I was expecting, but I was hoping that this film would dish out gore and psychology in equal measures. While writer/director Marian Dora does make an effort to give Cannibal a smidgen of substance, there isn't much emotional weight beneath the stegocephalic crust of cock stumps and pig intestines. Believe it or not, the script tries to be an artsy love story. I couldn't connect to it. Do I need to be a gay cannibal to relate to the relationship between the two main characters? If so, I question the decision to cater to such a narrow demographic. If not, I might be missing something.

If watching two men grope and penetrate each other makes you the least bit queasy, this isn't the low-budget splatter epic for you. Ironically, more people are offended by the overt sex scenes than the overt gore. The special effects are impressive. I don't know how they pulled off the castration sequence, but something tells me that I don't want to know. It looked too real, if you ask me. Of course, I'm joking, but I did wince once or twice. The violence is the only thing that I can honestly say I enjoyed about Cannibal.

Why the beggarly rating? The storyline is barebones, the pace is comatose, the dubbing is atrocious, and the dialogue is stilted (all ten lines of it). I didn't care about the players. I detested the score. I applaud Dora for taking an intimate approach to the material, but Jesus Christ. It's my opinion that Cannibal should have been a short film. If I had editing software on my computer and I knew how to use it, I could cut this baby down to twenty minutes. Needless to say, I don't recommend renting this "true crime" travesty. I'm going to try watching it as a gay cannibal and see if I change my mind.