Habit

A troubled young man living in Manchester, England, gets himself a cash in hand job working as a doorman at a seedy massage parlour (brothel) but finds himself mixed up with a cannibal sex cult. This film is a gritty, urban drama with strong horror elements of murder and cannibalism, an interesting idea but sadly it just did not really work for me. However it is well acted, has interesting characters, some very graphic gore and a fair bit of sex to make it worth watching.

Habit: Gritty urban horror set in Manchester. Michael meets Lee when she's fighting with a security guard at a Job Centre. She brings him into a strange circle based at her uncles massage club, Soon Michael witnesses a violent killing and is party to the cult like group's cannibalism. Pretty gruesome and dark, people being butchered and having chunks bitten out of them. Things get complicated when the cult crosses a gangster but we see that more than one club is preying on it's customers. Not a film for the squeamish and unlikely to be a hit with the Manchester Tourism Board. Written and directed by Simon Halligan. 7/10

The acting in Habit wasn't bad so that's already something but I can't say it's a satisfying movie. For that the story is a bit simple, not enough elaborated, even though the plot is pretty straightforward. It could have been better, now it's just about cannibals eating some random victims. They don't tell you why they do it, how they became like that and so on. The horror scenes are pretty gore so for the fans of that genre it's a good thing. For a low budget movie it isn't all that bad actually but it definitely could have been better storywise.

Bizarrely, this feels like a '60s Northern Kitchen Sink Drama, but with a bit more death, gore and sex. It meanders somewhat, fails to engage and adds up to a total waste of your time. Avoid.

This film is about a young man, with a sad family history consisting of suicide, parental abandonment and mental health issues, who finds a girl befriending him and taking him into a seedy world of sex parlors and cannibalism. He has to make a decision to become part of this group, who call themselves a family, or get out. The more he sees the more entrenched he becomes.

I'm not really one for cannibal horror. I did like the Hannibal Lecter series but I think it was due to how much psychology and intelligence played roles in the films. This isn't a very clever film. It relies a lot on the use of a sex parlor to draw their victims in and that just comes off kinda cheap to me. I would've prefered to have seen something a bit smarter than just the simple use of sex to catch prey. I mean, it works but it's just not very creative.

The quality of the film is not terribly bad. There were some scenes that leaned towards an artsy look. The actors seemed to be decent and the story was okay. There was some gore to it and they didn't mind rolling around in blood. So, if you are into blood covered boobs, this film has it.

All-in-all this isn't awful but it ain't great. Even though I don't care for cannibal movies, I want to be fair so I'm giving this 5 stars. If you like cannibal movies you may very well enjoy this much more than I did.