Director: Aimee Kuge
Writer: Aimee Kuge
Stars: April Consalo, Nate Wise, Clay von Carlowitz
Synopsis: An exploration of one’s relationships with food, sexuality, and revenge. It asks, “How far would you go in the name of love?”
Food and sex aren’t the strange combination we, in our most vanilla moments, believe them to be. Popular sexual innuendo includes some reference to eating or parts of anatomy that are referred to as food items. This combination, when taken to extremes, can contribute to the use of cannibalism as a version of sexual desire or as a catalyst for arousal. It’s not everyone’s proclivity, of course, but this avenue of eating, sex, and cannibalism is something worthy of being explored.
As much as these elements are all a part of Cannibal Mukbang, the story often doesn’t go far enough, or push deep enough into the psyche of its characters. In some ways, there are points where the depths could be plumbed with precision like a sharp knife through a tomato, but instead, the script, by writer/director Aimee Kuge, seems to smash the tomato first and then try to cut the pieces with a different and less effective mode of communication. It may be that the holes in the logic are just more visible when taken as a whole because the ending is a surprise, but not in a good way.
There are many things to like about Kuge’s script, though. The way she builds her metaphors about truly knowing someone and the anonymity that is built into our lives on the internet is well thought out. It’s clear that Mark (Nate Wise) has had a lot to unpack with his therapist and that his hesitancy with Ash (April Consalo) is coming from a real anxiety. It feels true to life that no matter how much Ash opens up to Mark, she has to remain guarded because of her mission and how she proceeds with it. It’s actually sweet, in spite of the circumstance, to see the two of them growing to trust and open up to one another.
That’s also thanks in part to Kuge as director and co-editor. The story is crafted like a pre-internet age horror film and a pre-internet age romance. There are multiple montages set to upbeat music and terrifying angles to cut between. This gauzy, emotional killing spree is also benefited by the eye of cinematographer Harrison Kraft. Kraft and Kuge are obviously aficionados of B movie horror and, in the midst of this modern tale of internet life, they find a way to create a throwback that at once looks familiar, but is distinctly modern.
One of the best crafted sequences of the film is also a terrific example of the “show, don’t tell” mantra of storytelling. Ash is ready to open up about her past and in a flashback made to look like a B movie scene, we see the story of Ash and her sister Allie (Autumn Consalo). The scenes are wordless, but the shift from something innocent to something horrible is deftly handled with careful staging. The sequence is ultimately a triumphant origin story for Ash.
This scene is helped by the fact that April Consalo fits that mold of classic femme fatale and modern “e-girl” stand in so perfectly. She has an arresting presence and a depth to her performance that makes you wish she was the focal character of the film and not just Mark’s love interest. She can shift easily from the vulnerable to the frightening, and from the cheesy to the serious. Consalo becomes every bit of Ash, or at least what Ash is willing to show.
Cannibal Mukbang might make you hungry or horny or both. It is a horror-romance, after all. These strange feelings will arise from these seemingly disparate ideas, like sex and food, mingling together. Cannibal Mukbang had the potential to be a truly awesome experience, but a few narrative missteps, including a tragedy of an ending, and slow pacing keep it from the upper echelons. It’s still a film to see to believe and worth seeking out wherever you can find it.
