Meat Grinder

I'm trying to do my part to help raise the rating of this film on IMDb. 5.4 is really too low for a film this graphic, intense and psychologically unnerving. I recently got my hands on the regular cut and the 'Uncut' cut and the difference is like watch 'Barney & Friends' and 'Scarface'. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but you know what I mean.

The cut version is still relatively graphic, but because it is so heavily altered, a few scenes will make more sense once you see a little more backstory as in the full version.

There's nothing sexual about this movie so it can't be compared to torture porn. The focus here is the killings. They're intended to shock you right out of the room. It's a shame the cut version is so heavily butchered because you lose a lot. The uncut version I had was dubbed with a Russian male voice, but once I downloaded an English srt and synced it in Media Player Classic, it made more sense.

This is a beautifully gruesome film. The visuals and music in this movie are amazing and draws you into this woman's life of mental anguish and bad luck.

The Meat Grinder is almost like your basic torture gore fest but Tiwa Moeithaisong makes it so much more then that and turns it into an enthralling, vibrant film that sucks you in entirely and plays with your emotions. This is a very sad, beautiful, spell binding film about a woman in love facing the demons of her past.

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There are poor and unrealistic excuses for all the shown torture. All seems very artificial constructed for the sake of showing torture and pain. The worst is the story telling, which is chaotic nonsense. Add some classical music elements and there will be people who are delighted about this "piece of art". Even though the torture effects are obviously handmade, which highers the realism a little bit, there are no insects shown in that blood coated scenario. No flys, no ants, no cockroaches, not anything - just bloody pain with an artificial forced kind of poor story and characters who are very unlikeable. Like all the unrealistic things which are shown, the motives of the characters are exaggerated to the maximum to force the impression that those characters would have a good excuse for their behavior, but they are just very sick. The one and a half hour felt one hour longer than it played. I recommend this movie for people who have too much time and like gore, no matter what.

The title, DVD cover and blurb all conspire to make this film look like a Thai slant on the torture porn sub-genre, but the truth is that it's nothing like that. It's much better!

Yes, it's a gory movie in which bodily dismemberment and death play major roles, but this is only part of the movie. In many ways, MEAT GRINDER is much more of a psychological horror film, exploring one woman's mental disintegration when faced with infidelity and violence. You could take out all the blood and guts and the film would be just as effective; it works best as a character study rather than a movie that just goes out of its way to nauseate.

One thing you notice first is Tiwa Moeithaisong's direction, which is definitely above par for the genre. Moeithaisong banishes memories of poor horror fodder like GHOST GAME and HELL to tell an engaging, speedily-paced movie that doesn't let up from the word go. Mai Charoenpura's performance as the put-upon stall owner is decent, as she keeps you on-side unlike many horror villains. The film in many ways reminds one of the equally icky DUMPLINGS (which were served up containing human foetuses) but MEAT GRINDER is offbeat and engaging enough to work all of its own.

The English title of this movie (Meat Grinder) and the bloody cover with a woman feeding a person and eyeball should prepare you that this movie will not be an easy watch. It is dark and gritty and there's lots of blood and gore involved. You see our protagonist struggling with mental illness and her behavior being depicted as being part of an ongoing cycle of violence that she suffered as a child. And this ongoing cycle of violence is now passed to her daughter. So if you enjoy brutal Thai-splatter movies with a good amount of gore which is explicitly shown you might found yourself a movie here.

However the movie also has its flaws. It's probably personal preference but there's a weird blue and grey filter all throughout the movie which on one hand brings a nice contrast to all the red blood but on the other hand makes the movie look cheap and unrealistic. Also you are served with quite a number of flashbacks and scene shifting that got me wondering what is going on at times. Still I think this movie was a decent watch and I'm surprised that it barely has a thousand views here on IMDb. [5,4/10]