Armin Meiwes (Carsten Frank) has been searching the internet for someone that will allow him to eat their flesh. After meeting with a few people, and either being rejected or not liking the person, he hears from Bernd Brandes (Victor Brandl). After talking on the internet for a little while, they agree to meet. Armin wants to eat flesh and Bernd wants someone to kill him and then eat his flesh, after trying it himself. After...well, getting to know each other, Bernd wants Armin to go through with it, starting with biting off his penis.
I won't go into too much detail here, but I'm sure you can figure out the rest from there. Cannibal is a German film written and directed by Marian Dora. From what I can tell, he made this film as close as possible to actual events. Depending on what you read, some articles say that Armin ate his lover, while other articles never say anything about it, just that he ate the other guy. The film itself was shot very well, but Dora went the off the beaten track by not including much dialogue. Once in a while you will hear someone talking as background noise, but it takes a good while before one of the main characters says anything that we can hear. I wouldn't have minded that but what was going on usually just wasn't very interesting. I appreciate that Dora tried to make it as accurate as possible, but one can only take so much of dating going wrong and two naked men doing whatever. On the IMDb boards, there seems to be some that complains about the two guys going at it, and not the violence or subject matter. I found that to be funny in some ways. If you can get past all of that stuff, if you don't find it interesting that is, the last 40 minutes or so could make it up to you. There is nothing scary to be found in Cannibal, but the ending could be very disturbing to a lot of people.
It has been a little while since I have watched a movie with a lot of effects in it. Cannibal surprised me in this way since I knew it was a low budget film going in. Some felt that the effects were so realistic that they worried that Victor Brandl was actually killed during the filming of the movie. This seems to be fueled by the fact that Brandl had only been in this movie (until this year it seems). Dora doesn't move the camera away when things begin to happen. Like biting then cutting off a penis. Cutting open the body and pulling everything out. It is all there. The only thing I feel I can complain about is that Carsten Frank didn't get all that bloody during these scenes. The acting was good. I don't know that I could be in this film if I was a guy, unless I liked guys, so I give these two guys a lot of credit for going through with it.
Cannibal was kind of a hard to get through for different reasons. As I said, I appreciate Dora trying to film everything as close as he could compared to what happened. It doesn't appear that he added any unneeded drama or scares. The first part was a little boring just because there was no talking at all. I got what was going on with no problems, but it would have been nice to have some talking to go with it. The next section I thought would be more interesting but turned into watching two guys being naked most of the time while getting to know each other. I guess that is cool, but not what I watch horror films for. While Cannibal has the horror tag to go with it, it is hard to call it that. It is more of a drama that just happens to have a lot of gory effects at the end of it. I'm not going to say if you the reader should go watch this movie. I will leave that up to you based one what you have read here and with other reviews.
3 out of 5 Good thing I had finished eating my dinner
1 comment:
Nice title!! ;-)
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