And it's not a quality dinner, but something you'd throw into the garbage can right away, also in terms of the cinematic quality we have here. "Cannibal" is a German German-language movie from 2006, so it has its 10th anniversary this year. The writer and director is Marian Dora and he is certainly known to fans of gore and splatter films for his approach to movie making. This 90-minute movie we have here is among his most known works and it deals with the story of Armin Meiwes, a German who was sentenced to life in prison for killing and eating his "victim". I write "victim" because the other guy willingly agreed to what Meiwes did to him. So it is definitely an interesting story that deserves its own movie. But not in the way it was done here. Dora does not focus on quality filmmaking or writing, but only wants to make it as vomit-inducing as possible, for example with the very graphic scene where the protagonist cuts off the other guy's penis. The two lead actors are Carsten Frank and Victor Brandl and admittedly they aren't very memorable at all, especially Frank is entirely forgettable despite playing a character that really could have stayed in your mind with the right actor touching the role. The overall thing looks fairly amateurish I must say from start to finish and this does refer to the physical quality of the movie as well as the pretentious Hansel and Gretel voice-over by German horror film acting legend Manoush, As a whole, this film does not do the subject any justice at all. The filmmaker's attempts to make this something like a romance movie look very clumsy and do not work at all in the face of all the violence depicted graphically in here. And after all, if this is a love story film then it is about the most normal thing in the world, isn't it? But then it goes completely against the idea of being special enough to turn it into a film. There is no other motivation behind these 1.5 hours than to shock as many people as possible. I don't recommend the watch. Thumbs down and a major one indeed.
Review of Cannibal
