Review of Cannibal

Cannibal (2013)
3/10
Stunningly dull
4 May 2014
Warning: Spoilers
A couple in a car is intentionally forced off the road. The car flips over, presumably both die. The guy responsible in the other car grabs the female and drags her into his car. He drives to a cabin in the mountains where he butchers her and takes the neatly packed pieces of meat back home and in his fridge. The guy is a tailor living in an apartment.

He meets an attractive Romanian neighbor who is also attracted to him. She offers him her massage services if he lets her put some fliers in his shop. She tries to get closer to him but he recoils every time. She has a fight with relatives in her apartment and files a report with the police. One day she disappears.

Now her twin sister shows up at the guy's door asking if she's seen the missing sister. She too files a report with the police with the guy's help. She tells him that she suspects that the sister ran off with some money. She has parents elsewhere in Spain who bought an apartment and the sister probably stole their money. Now the guy offers to give her four thousand euro just like that. In exchange for nothing. She's suspicious. But as there's also a violent Romanian thug who was the sister's boyfriend and keeps causing her trouble, she seeks refuge with the tailor.

One day she gives him a massage but he quickly leaves, drives to a beach, watches a couple, when they go into the water, he runs over the guy and goes after the girl but she vanishes in the water.

Now the guy offers to take the girl to his cabin. She agrees. Part of his plan was to get her to leave with the money to see her parents. And at the cabin no one will suspect that she's there in particular the thug. He drugs her, tries to butcher her, but he can't. Next he confesses to her that he killed her sister and that he's killed 8 other woman and eaten them, and that he nearly killed her. She doesn't believe it. When they drive down the mountain, she grabs the wheel, the car loses control, flips over and she dies.

Cannibal is one long, slow, dull, boring movie. I guess the heading "A love story" should be a warning to audiences looking for some horror thriller. It's not much of a love story either. There's just nothing there. Every scene is excessively long. Starting from the intro credits which has the camera at a distance and watches for 5 minutes as the couple stops at a gas station. Plenty of scenes are completely pointless and add nothing to the story. Our unlikely cannibal is a radical cannibal on top of that. He won't eat anything beside human meat. No veggies, no occasional trips to the restaurant, no food cooked by the girl for him.

You would think that as a long European movie, they would fill the scenes with dialogue, screaming, drama. But not this one. The guy has little to nothing to say about anything. So most of the movie is just silent. For better or worse there's no musical score. It wouldn't be Spanish movie if there weren't some church business involved. And he's hired to copy a religious mantle of sorts. I guess it's supposed to be ironic. The movie ends with a religious procession.

Olimpia Melinte is adorable and attractive. But she can't save this movie all by herself. There is some beautiful outdoor scenery occasionally. Cannibal unfortunately has nothing to offer, not much of a story, no ideas, no insight, little titillation.
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