I don't get why this film gets rave reviews. The acting is pretty bad, the budget is nonexistent, the plot is absurd, and most egregiously, it is hilarious instead of horrifying.
Several scenes in the film stick out to me; in one of these, one of the bland female leads sends her man to fetch her some water with a bucket for her feet or something. After he doesn't come back for a while, she goes over to the edge of the boat, and notices his head in the bucket instead. In a movie with a budget more than $4, this would be very unsettling. But this is Antropophagus. As a result, the head is blatantly paper mache, and consequentially invokes laughs instead of fear.
Another scene comes later in the movie. The gang goes to visit the creepy abandoned mansion on the island, and watch as the owner leaps from the top of the stairway with a noose around her neck to hang herself. After she dies, the crew just move on as if nothing had happened. Keep in mind that they have seen little to no actual murder or blood up to this point. By this point in the movie, I was too overwhelmed by the sheer stupidity of everything else that this seemed like a mere raindrop in the torrential downpour.
But the most ridiculous scene in the entire film is the infamous baby scene. If you don't know what I'm talking about, basically the titular killer rips out a pregnant woman's unborn fetus and eats it. On paper, it sounds messed up. But in execution, the film falls flat, to put it nicely. When I first watched this scene, I cried out with an exasperated "Oh, come on!" All the while, my father burst out in to laughter. The film tries so, so desperately to scare you that it ends up being shockingly ridiculous. It pulls out everything it can; decapitation, stabbing, hanging, and of course cannibalism in an attempt to frighten. But you cannot simply copy and paste these elements from better horror movies and expect them to work here. You need actual care and effort.
That's not to say that everything in the film falls flat. Just basically everything does. The score is okay for a horror movie, and given the budget it's maybe even relatively impressive. The cinematography is pretentious, but generally good. The lighting in this one scene where everyone's sleeping is somewhat interesting. And the characters weren't as paper thin as some horror movies (*cough* Curse of La Llorona *cough*). But overall, the film puts so much emphasis on it's "scariness" that all of these things are incredibly minor by comparison. However, I can't give this movie one star, because at the very least it has some ironic entertainment value. Just don't go in thinking it will be remotely unsettling.
Final Score: 18/100.
Several scenes in the film stick out to me; in one of these, one of the bland female leads sends her man to fetch her some water with a bucket for her feet or something. After he doesn't come back for a while, she goes over to the edge of the boat, and notices his head in the bucket instead. In a movie with a budget more than $4, this would be very unsettling. But this is Antropophagus. As a result, the head is blatantly paper mache, and consequentially invokes laughs instead of fear.
Another scene comes later in the movie. The gang goes to visit the creepy abandoned mansion on the island, and watch as the owner leaps from the top of the stairway with a noose around her neck to hang herself. After she dies, the crew just move on as if nothing had happened. Keep in mind that they have seen little to no actual murder or blood up to this point. By this point in the movie, I was too overwhelmed by the sheer stupidity of everything else that this seemed like a mere raindrop in the torrential downpour.
But the most ridiculous scene in the entire film is the infamous baby scene. If you don't know what I'm talking about, basically the titular killer rips out a pregnant woman's unborn fetus and eats it. On paper, it sounds messed up. But in execution, the film falls flat, to put it nicely. When I first watched this scene, I cried out with an exasperated "Oh, come on!" All the while, my father burst out in to laughter. The film tries so, so desperately to scare you that it ends up being shockingly ridiculous. It pulls out everything it can; decapitation, stabbing, hanging, and of course cannibalism in an attempt to frighten. But you cannot simply copy and paste these elements from better horror movies and expect them to work here. You need actual care and effort.
That's not to say that everything in the film falls flat. Just basically everything does. The score is okay for a horror movie, and given the budget it's maybe even relatively impressive. The cinematography is pretentious, but generally good. The lighting in this one scene where everyone's sleeping is somewhat interesting. And the characters weren't as paper thin as some horror movies (*cough* Curse of La Llorona *cough*). But overall, the film puts so much emphasis on it's "scariness" that all of these things are incredibly minor by comparison. However, I can't give this movie one star, because at the very least it has some ironic entertainment value. Just don't go in thinking it will be remotely unsettling.
Final Score: 18/100.