Diary of a Cannibal (2006)

Diary of a Cannibal (2006) - United States

Directed by: Ulli Lommel

ABOUT THE FILM:

If the term "cinematic sleeping-pill" were in the dictionary, pairing it with the poster image for Diary of a Cannibal would do the phrase more than enough justice. This movie was conceived when (the now late) German director Ulli Lommel worked with notorious fellow German director Marian Dora on the set of Lommel's Zombie Nation. The two penned a script based on the real life case of Armin Meiwes, a man who was convicted for cannibalizing a man he met on the internet. When Lommel deemed Dora's film to be far too graphic and disturbing, he quickly went to work on his own version, which Lionsgate would later release as Diary of a Cannibal.

Now why is that last part relevant? Well frankly, I can't see how Lionsgate would even consider distributing a hunk of shit like this.

To summarize, Diary of a Cannibal is about a couple, Adam and Noelle, who meet on the internet. Adam wants Noelle to kill him and feast on his flesh as the ultimate sign of love. So the two drive out to this.. warehouse thing.. in the middle of no where. Noelle straps him to a giant cross, guts and decapitates him and then grills and feasts on his organs. To pad this piece of shit out even more, they add endless amounts of recycled footage, shots of the beach, gratuitous footage of a lamb being skinned, scenes of Noelle driving on a Vespa, and whatever bible inserts Lommel could find that are related to cannibalism- it just keeps going and it never ends. Eventually Noelle is caught, sent to prison and convicted, and then Adam's mom pays off a bunch of inmates to savagely beat Noelle. She is then hospitalized and dies on the hospital bed as police question why she was sent to prison, even though she was already convicted and serving her sentence!!! The only reason the hospital scenes exist is to tell the story entirely in flashback, out of order, mind you, and pad this movie out with as much recycled footage, artsy-fartsy montage-style editing, bible quotes and other pretentious bullshit as possible.

There you go, I just saved 82 minutes of your life! You're welcome.

REVIEW:

Despite the story being shallow and nonsensical, it probably would've worked better as a short instead of an 82 minute snoozefest. So not only is the story a failure on every level, but the actors (I'm using that term as loosely as I can) put absolutely no effort into trying to emote or put some life into these dull, empty characters. The entire movie, it's clear that the actors don't care and just want to cash a paycheck, a check they did not earn because they didn't do a god-damned thing on camera. Even then, the only thing Adam managed to do was to sport a dead-eyed, lifeless stare the entire film.

And on top of that... I don't mind watching amateur movies, but when I see movies being put out by a company as big as Lionsgate, I would expect some sort of quality-control. However, not only do we have the endless amounts of recycled footage, but the editing is so piss-poor and there are tons of filters and layered shots added that just make the movie even harder to watch. The camera work here for the most part is shaky and fuzzy, and sometimes they even unfocus the camera to try and hide some of the questionable special effects!

On that note, the best effect in the entire film is the end credits.

Everything else is incredibly cheap and shit, but two effects in particular stand out. After Noelle cuts off Adam's head, she carries his head towards the table to set it down. At first you'd swear they made a cast of the actor's head because it looks incredibly detailed. But then you see a still-shot of it and you can tell the actor's face is just photoshopped onto a rubber head! 

Then in another shot with the head facing the camera, the camera is so blurry that it's impossible to see anything!

But even worse, we get a shot of what is supposed to be Adam's headless body strapped to the giant cross thing. Instead of using a dummy, they put a solid black digital shadow over the actor's head to try and hide it!

I swear that I didn't edit that picture.

That is easily the worst special effect I have ever fucking seen. For Christ's sakes, DAS KOMABRUTALE KIFFERDUELL had better special effects than this!! Just process that for a second. And on top of that, the blood changes thickness from scene to scene, and even the innards change too! When Noelle first pulls out Adam's heart and organs, they look just like a heart and organs. But once she'd finished grilling them, they suddenly turned into what look to be a steak and a giant chunk of ham. And as we have a shot of her cutting in the heart, once more, the camera is blurred. That shot alone tells me that Ulli Lommel knew he had a terrible movie on his hands, but he was going to try and hide that as much as possible and still try to profit off of it. And that is disgusting.

Before I watched this movie I had heard nothing but terrible things about it. Usually I can find at least one positive in a bad movie, but this couldn't give me any. Not even one. At least Das Komabrutale Kifferduell made me laugh; at least they... kinda tried to do special effects. At least the Wood of No Return wasn't boring beyond all belief!

This was unwatchable. This is by far the worst horror movie I have ever seen, and I wouldn't wish for my worst enemies to watch a movie this fucking atrociously bad.

RELEASES:

-Somehow, this abominable thing got released on DVD by Lionsgate in 2007. It comes with trailers and an audio commentary, which is nothing but Lommel and his editor and actor stroking his ego.