The Horror Show
The Cannibal Club
by Guto Parente
It’s no secret that I love a great cannibal film and that I love foreign horror. So, when I watched Brazilian director Guto Parente’s The Cannibal Club, I had pretty high expectations. I knew it was a low budget indie film and those can either be the hidden gems of the horror world or fall flat for me.
This film is about a wealthy Brazilian couple, Otavio and Gilda, who belong to a secret society of cannibals. The wealthy are put on display as absolute monsters, talking about how they wish death upon the poor citizens of their country and expressing their opinions of those less than them with absolutely no shame. It makes sense that people like this would be keen to eat their employees for dinner whenever they got the chance.
Cannibal Club opens strong and is not shy with the gore, but then quickly loses steam toward the middle of the film. It was heavy on the dialogue and I felt like many of the conversations that took place offered little to the plot and could have been shortened or replaced with more action. We also don’t get to see much of the club’s evil deeds. For example, there’s a specific event that takes place for the gentlemen only in the club and we are delivered a gratuitous sex scene that cuts away from the gore at the last second. You hear the killing happening, but you don’t get to see it. This didn’t make much sense to me as the film didn’t hold back in the opening act and it sure doesn’t hold back during the finale.
There’s some great satire in the film and it definitely pokes fun of the wealthy elite, however, I just wished a movie about cannibals would have had a bit more, well, cannibalism. There’s much that’s eluded to, but we don’t really experience a whole lot of it. I think the final act definitely contains the film’s strongest moments and there’s a great twist.
With only an eighty-minute runtime, The Cannibal Club is a short watch that can unfortunately feel much longer due to the drawn out dialogue, but at least there are some good moments of humor throughout.
Horror Metal Sounds received a screener of this film in exchange for review. You can watch The Cannibal Club on demand starting March 5th.
Stevie Kopas, HMS
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