By PAYTON McCARTY-SIMAS
Starring April Consalo, Nate Wise and Clay von Carlowitz
Written and directed by Aimee Kuge
Jackrabbit Media
In CANNIBAL MUKBANG, Aimee Kuge’s candy-colored, low-fi debut horror feature, a waiflike YouTuber named Ash (April Consalo) channels Jennifer’s Body, Promising Young Woman and The Last House on the Left to satisfy her bottomless appetite for revenge. The film is both a weirdos-in-love slasher and a look at the parasitic nature of the digitalconsumer economy, and it takes the same jaw-cracking, brute force approach to its themes that Ash takes to her mukbang videos. While in some cases the filmmakers may have bitten off more than they could chew in the conceptual department, teasing moral ambiguities that could have done with a little more–dare I say–fleshing out, it’s still a frothy, bloody, finger-licking debut with a distinctly femme sensibility sure to satisfy low-budget horror fans hungry for Cool Girls gone bad.
This is a film that wears its stylistic references on its sleeve. We begin by watching old horror movies on a clunker tube with Mark (Nate Wise), a painfully awkward, creepily shy customer service agent at Yellow Mitten, a soulless meal box delivery company. His job emphasizes the dehumanizing nature of the online marketplace, turning cooking from a daily act of self-care into a TaskRabbit-style chore to be haggled over with an anonymous agent. As the opening’s focus on his TV demonstrates, though, Mark cares much more about his side hustle, reviewing horror flicks. He’s passionate about them because they’re stories about “making something out of nothing,” a striver’s mentality he’s quickly drawn to in Ash, with whom he soon meets at a gas station convenience store. After the odd couple improbably bond–though making it plausible that the quick-witted and charming Ash would go for Mark’s stilted young nice guy, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer style, is something the film doesn’t ever quite pull off. Whether the overly-talky script or Wise’s boldly affected performance is at fault is unclear–Ash eventually reveals that her real hustle is stalking sexual predators online, killing and eating them in her videos as revenge for a pulpy past trauma. You can almost hear Jennifer Check flouncily assuring Needy that she’s not killing people, she’s “killing boys.” This time, though, she’s eating boys for a good cause. Soon, Ash has enlisted Mark as her accomplice and dinner date while Mark’s smarmy older brother (Clay von Carlowitz) makes misogynistic mischief on the sidelines.
Beyond the opening, Kuge sprinkles ample references to older grindhouse filmmaking throughout CANNIBAL MUKBANG, from its soft, glowy style to a throwback sequence in the bayou that evokes, among others, I Spit on Your Grave. These touches are affectionate, bringing the story into contact with the rape revenge films upon which it so overtly draws (one direct reference to Wes Craven’s gory debut is particularly satisfying). There are also hints of modern cannibal films like Fresh (and more distantly cannibal classics like Ravenous), dashes of Cam’s gendered gig-worker hellscape and a whiff of neo-grindhouse flicks like Hard Candy, Knock Knock, and of course, Promising Young Woman.
Much of CANNIBAL MUKBANG’s runtime is dedicated to the uncanny love story at its center, for good and ill. Mark is squeamish about sex, picturing feeding his own body to his hungry girlfriend or tearing out her guts in some of the film’s most entertaining fantasy sequences. A montage of the pair working together on their new murder racket is also a blast. More broadly, though, while delving into the two young lovers’ queasy connection is undeniably compelling, particularly given their strongly contrasting personalities, motivations and drives, some passages can drag as the pair cautiously feel each other out without shedding much light on their mutual affinity. Certain scenes risk feeling redundant in this way, highlighting the thematic elements that could have merited deeper exploration in these empty spaces–for example, what is it about Mark that Ash finds so interesting? What is the film’s broader take on life chronically online? How are we to feel about Ash’s potentially unreliable methods for identifying and honeypotting sexual predators?
When Consalo takes the lead, the film really finds its stride. She’s electric as the bubbly kind of woman that the men in her orbit call a “manic pixie dream girl” without a hint of irony, using a wide variety of Cool Girl personae to lure evildoers of the “Jeffrey Epstein type” to their doom. The costumes (by Jolene Richardson), production design (by Deana M. Biagi and Matt Weir) and poppy score (by Alex Cuervo, Smile 2) go a long way towards bringing the pathology of this steely-eyed, infantilized murder vixen into focus. Similarly, Harrison Kraft’s cinematography, though not as varied as it could have been (some of the lagging scenes feel trapped in a perpetual state of medium close-up), helps lend the impression that this woman’s world is a playground of her own creation. Where Mark’s troubles risk feeling half-baked, Ash’s morally righteous taste for blood is a sugary, pulpy confection. Once the carving knives and sparkly eyeshadow come out, CANNIBAL MUKBANG gives you plenty to chew on.
CANNIBAL MUKBANG is now available to rent and purchase on most major streaming platforms.
