Have a hankering for meat? After just watching this exploitative gloomy little shocker you'll be licking your chops or simply not hungry
maybe for days. The low-budgeted Japanese film 'The Last Supper' is a clinically weird, demented and often tasteless (but some might find it amusingly laughable) cannibal story about a plastic surgeon who goes from dweeb to popular after reverting to eating women's liposuction fat and this would lead to murder when the fixation becomes an addiction to keep this demanding persona. Everyone loves the unknown meat he always cooks up; suddenly he's the caught the gaze of an infatuated nurse and the cops begin their suspicious questioning after a disappearance of one of his patients.
Perversely shocking and humorously twisted with deadpan sprinklings (and this is suitably done with the wedding gift towards the end that has to be seen to be believed!). Vegetarians keep clear. The camera likes to focus on the bloody, juicy meat at every opportunity and there's a scene that would have animal lovers in an uproar. It's bold, audacious and writer/director Osamu Fukutani's establishes a stimulating unpredictable and patient screenplay (off Kei Oishi's novel which would be an interesting read if this film is anything to go by) on a familiar concept involving a protagonist/cannibal surgeon (soberly humanised performance by Masaya Kato) detailing how his craving for woman's flesh began and eventually the patterns he went about to feed his hunger (like the sequence involving finding a secret club of cannibals and his actual first kill). There might be something hollow and disconnected to it, but it stays gripping and interesting in it's hauntingly close to heart illustrations.
Fukutani's direction is competent in its limited scope and hypnotically tailored in a slow-ease and artsy style (look at the neon-lighting), but during the grotesque and splatter scenes he doesn't hold back. Simply in your face with the decapitations and dismembering of his victims, as you grit your teeth and recoil due to the nauseatingly squishy sound effects. Cracking bones (thanks to one hack-saw sequence), skin pealing, blood dripping, body parts sliding out and flesh chopping. Straight into the bubbling frying pan. Tasty! The allurement of the forbidden fruit and its strong essence is almost like an organism for those who eat it. They can't get enough of this ecstasy and that makes it slightly unnerving.
Digital photography helps invoke a real sense of intimacy and the music is subtly dramatic with its scattered choices. The performances are tolerable with Hiroki Matsukata making for a weaselling detective.
'The Last Supper' is cheaply produced, but a luridly fulfilling meal of delicacy.
