Escape from Cannibal Farm

Cannibal Farm, where do I even begin? Let's start with the fact that I watch 2 films daily and have been doing so for years. The only time I write online reviews is when I want to warn would-be viewers just how God-awful a movie is before they waste their time (or worse, money) on it. This is only the second time I've ever had to do this. Enough said, right? In occasional attempts at competence, the film sloppily copy/pastes ideas from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Saw, and even House of 1000 Corpses, before launching into cringe-worthy, ear-grating monologues by characters that might as well be too drunk to be able to put together anything resembling cohesive plot clues in this nearly 2-hour cringe fest, but I digress. This movie is so bad that to do a truly in-depth review of it would be an insult to higher thought itself. The films deserves only the requisite amount of frontal lobe activity necessary to ensure intelligent viewers steer clear of it, and nothing more, so, STEER CLEAR! You have been warned.

The sooner these characters all die horribly, the better.

The only half decent one was the crazy old coot by the side of the road.

Which is a standard horror cliche, and even then they messed it up :(

Utterly irritating waste of time.

P.s. "Does this review contain spoilers?" Hahaha no - nothing I say could spoil this any more than it is already.

I really wish they had more of a budget. I get it, its a low budget move, but I dug the story and wanted the look and effects of the movie to match it. The kills were good, even some unexpected jumps. I know this movie takes a lot of its inspirations from movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, House of 1000, and The Hills Have Eyes but it still felt exciting to watch. This movie is flying pretty low under the radar, and deserves a little more recognition for what it is.

The movie starts in the country side with a prank gone wrong causing deaths n then suddenly changes into another scene, a copy of Hills have Eyes kinda where a family head out on a camping trip to enjoy some family bonding that too far off in the same country side without any gadgets or phones. They land upon a farm where a deranged farmer n his deformed son stays alone and they kill people n sell off their meat to a mysterious meat eater.

At a length of more than 100 mins runtime, the film gets tedious n messy with too many subplots without any tension, suspense or character development. There is too much of unnecessary red color scenes which gets annoying, the kills r very few but there is unnecessary screaming.

The effects r abysmal. A women's hand gets severed by a sword but she is busy chatting, that too without any blood flowing, a man gets burned in an oven but looks like covered in mud, a scalp gets sliced by a saw but very badly n poorly done. The hand electrocution scene is lol. A woman is able to capture many people in the cages, all alone n that too without any effort. And inspite of this she is shown asking the captives, "I hope that u guys have some family or kids missing you". Generous with 4 as the director is surely a big fan of Hills Have Eyes, TCM, etc. Also the twist is good regarding the reverend n the "other guy".

So I've heard about this film for a while and finally found the time to sit down and watch.

Was I in for a treat!

The only way to describe Cannibal Farm is thus.

It's like The League of Gentlemen decided to write a comedy horror script, realised that it wasn't that good, threw the script in the bin and it was picked up by a GCSE drama student who ignored the comedy elements and focused on the horror.

The dialogue is ropey as hell and delivered with more ham than a Percy Pig advertising campaign.

My favourite line in the whole film goes to:

'You'll have to cut off your feet and find the keys, it's the only way'

Yep, this gives you the idea of the type of thing you'll be watching. I'm assuming the director did his auditions at a local village hall during the Okehampton players amateur dramatics societies production of Puss in Boots.

The gore is passable and not as frequent as you might expect with a film of this title.

Clocking in at 1 hour 40, it does drag and you'll be clock watching during the last 30 minutes.

The only positive I will mention is the writers attempt at a few plot twists. As ambitious as they were, ultimately you just don't particularly care. In case you haven't already assumed (considering the villain is a face wearing chainsaw wielding madman) the film takes inspiration from Tobe Hooper's classic 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'.

Not so much a homage as the end result is a cross between 'Hot Fuzz'and 'The Room'.

Cannibal Farm is definitely a misleading title and the writer should've settled with 'Carry on Cannibal'.

Would I recommend watching it?...for the comedy value, definitely, however don't go into it thinking this will be a good piece of horror. If that's what you're after you're best sticking with Tobe Hooper's ground breaking masterpiece.