Cannibal Diner

A bunch of nubile German chicks head off to an abandoned diner before discovering that it's really home to a den of cannibals. One by one they are picked off in tame cutaway ways until the one that's left runs around a lot while whimpering. You ever see a film with a pretty cool cover which makes you think it might at least have some nice gore and be a passable entertaining time filler? Only then you put it on and it's absolutely dire and generic and totally devoid of any tension, suspense or fun? Yeah. Cannibal Diner is one of those films. Basically, it's a generic badly directed mess and most unforgivably of all, it's really boring. The director is apparently under the bizarre delusion that jumpy flashy cut off editing and long scenes of a chick stumbling around to intense urgent music equates to tension. It doesn't.

I don't want to sound too harsh here because I never expected much to begin with, and sucker as I am for all things cannibal related in horror, my standards tend to be fairly low in this regard. All I ask for is some nice gore and some perky nudity. Now while there is admittedly some perky nudity here, it's still an utterly abysmal film, that failed to even meet my low requirements, and I gotta say, I'm actually amazed that films like this even get financed. I firmly believe that for all its flaws, indie or low budget horror is actually the lifeblood of the genre, in terms of quality, but just like big budgeted and decidedly bland remakes, indie horror unfortunately throws some turkeys our way also and Cannibal Diner is a film to be avoided, as it's one of those films where your finger is itching to press the fast forward button 30 minutes in and even at 66 minutes (6 minutes are end credits) it still outstays its welcome. 2/10 a really bad and boring horror film and far too tame.

Avoid.

The title CANNIBAL DINER and the poster led me to imagine that this was going to be a movie about an establishment that serves up human flesh for the eating. Though admittedly quite distasteful, the topic has had some surprisingly good treatments, such as DELICATESSEN (1991), EATING RAOUL (1982) and especially THE GREEN BUTCHERS (2003). Even cheesier treatments like MOTEL HELL (1980) and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2(1986), which are not really good movies, have managed to do something with this idea. Alas, the title is positively deceptive and, in a way, so is the poster: there are cannibals, but there is no diner (could it be that the German film-makers meant "dinner"??).

This film turns out to be yet another take on the well-worn theme of hot chicks being hunted, this time by chemically contaminated cannibal mutants(?) who are just actors in black face-paint.

Though I would not call this film amateurish, it comes close. Even worse, it lacks even one ounce of originality, as most scenes are borrowed from other movies. There are many scenes of the girls walking around which end up just providing ample opportunities to check how much longer the movie is going to be. In more than one of those walking scenes, I was stunned by the incongruence between the lack of tension in the scene and the excitement conveyed by the stock music, even more so because the director apparently also wrote some of the music, and as such would have been expected to have a better feel for how the music and the visuals go together.

This movie's worst sin is that it is unrelentingly, mercilessly boring. I do not think I have ever checked as much and impatiently anticipated when a film is going to be over, even though it clocks in at only 75 minutes.

I sometimes read in negative movie reviews expressions of regret or anger about how the reviewer's time was wasted, but this kind of thought almost never occurs to me. I appreciate that putting together a movie is a major undertaking, and even if it is bad, it still represents a sustained effort by a group of people to make a vision a reality. This deserves to be applauded and appreciated just on its own. And usually I do, and therefore I almost never regard my time as wasted, even if the film was profoundly bad.

But here, the pointless ending after having endured excessively indulgent yet stultifyingly boring walking/chasing scenes did actually bring up feelings of annoyance at having wasted my time with this. In the future, I will strictly avoid all works by this director.

"Cannibal Diner" starts out nicely enough, sort of a German version of "Wrong Turn", but then the movie takes a turn for the worse and it is steeply downhill from there.

The story is about a girl trying to find her friend and sister as they are out camping. But something has gone wrong as the campsite is abandoned when she finally gets there. Stumbling through the woods, she comes across an old abandoned factory, which serves as the home for a group of cannibals.

Right, and that was basically it. The movie started out nicely enough, but once getting to the factory, the movie just dissolved into sheer stupidity. If people had been living out there as cannibals, why would they be familiar with electronic devices? And what was up with the soot-covered faces? And the entire segment where she was running around the factory with a camera set for night-vision, that was just insulting, and it carried on forever.

This movie had no scary moments, and it just become annoying towards the end. The movie is nowhere near the "Wrong Turn" movies, nor the "The Hills Have Eyes" movies, but it tries so hard to be so. I wasn't particularly impressed by this movie, and sort of sank into a boredom-induced coma towards the last third of the movie.

The title of the movie doesn't really make much sense either.

"Cannibal Diner" gets a mere 3 out of 10 stars from me.

Seriously! Just bad! On every level! The best thing about this, is the poster! Subsequently also the DVD cover using that poster image of course (or maybe it was the other way around). There are some beautiful women in this (and one or two of them do show some skin), but this does not elevate the viewing experience.

Actually there is a scene towards the end of the movie, that is almost completely dark, which is almost kind of good. It does create some atmosphere. But too little too late! The effects are OK and maybe the only thing that might make the viewing experience not a complete disaster. It's a shame, because the filmmaker is such a nice guy. And it's good that he tries to do genre cinema in Germany ... but he has some work to do!

I gave it two because of the hot models ruining around with tank top cleavage and short skirts.

To think Herzog, Winders, Fassbinder, Lang, all came from Germany and now this awful film. Hard to believe. The writer seems enjoy chicks running around screaming, which I believe the screams were dubbed anyway.

Other reviews are right, Wrong Turn, makes Cannibal Diner look like a student film shot on 8m.

The lead actress sure spends a lot of time running through the forest and running though an abandoned warehouse. Oops that is the movie. Not to worry about dialogue, there really isn't any. The girls are hot, and I give the casting director the most credit.

TGIF applies here, thank god its finished. Use chapter skip a lot, you will not miss anything. As for the jerky camera no light finale, um, been done before with a lot more style and narration.