Some movies are so bad they’re funny. Some movies are so bad they’re tragic. Diary of a Cannibal manages to be so bad it feels like punishment from a vengeful god you didn’t even know you’d angered. This 2007 dumpster fire, directed by Ulli Lommel—the same man responsible for Zombie Nation and a thousand wasted VHS rentals—attempts to spin a grotesque real-life crime into a “love story.” Spoiler: it fails so hard that the only thing getting devoured is your will to live.
The Setup: “You Complete Me. Now Pass the Salt.”
The plot is insultingly simple. Noelle (Jillian Swanson), a young woman with the acting range of a damp paper bag, meets Adam (Trevor Parsons), a man whose hobby is convincing women to turn him into a five-course meal. They meet online, fall in “love,” and within five minutes he’s suggesting she chop him into pieces like a HoneyBaked ham. Noelle resists at first—because that’s the natural reaction when someone asks you to sauté their kidneys—but, as with all bad romances, she gives in.
The two rent a warehouse in the desert, which looks like a condemned Home Depot, and proceed to act out the most awkward cooking show pilot in history. She butchers him. She cooks him. She eats him. Then, in perhaps the only realistic moment in the film, she steps outside for a smoke break. Nothing says “date night” like grilling your lover’s liver with a side of Marlboros.
The cops show up because some poor schmuck wanders in looking for furniture and instead finds the “all-you-can-eat Adam buffet.” Noelle is arrested, beaten up in prison, and spends the rest of the movie in flashback explaining how she ended up in this mess. Spoiler: it’s not interesting.
The Acting: If Edible Cardboard Had Feelings
Let’s talk performances. Jillian Swanson as Noelle has two emotions: vague confusion and “about to sneeze.” She whispers half her lines as though she’s ordering takeout, which is a strange choice given she spends the movie turning her boyfriend into takeout. Trevor Parsons as Adam doesn’t act so much as he monologues like a guy trying to sell you essential oils at a strip mall kiosk. His constant “eat me so we can be one” speeches aren’t romantic—they sound like rejected goth lyrics from a MySpace band circa 2005.
Everyone else is irrelevant. The cops are played by actors who clearly got paid in coupons. The prison inmates are so unconvincing they look like they were recruited from a yoga class down the street. And then there’s a random furniture shopper who stumbles into the crime scene. He deserves an Oscar just for showing genuine emotion in this cinematic graveyard.
The Horror: Pig Organs and Public Access Editing
This is a horror movie, allegedly. Except the horror isn’t the cannibalism—it’s the filmmaking. The gore effects are made from pig carcasses, which is about the only thing authentic in the movie. Unfortunately, Lommel films them with the enthusiasm of a guy shooting a cooking demo for public access TV. You don’t recoil; you yawn and wonder if you should pick up bacon on your way home.
The editing is a fever dream of zooms, fades, and shaky cam that feels like someone discovered Windows Movie Maker for the first time. Scenes repeat. Dialogue loops. At one point, the same flashback plays twice in under ten minutes, as though Lommel assumed the audience had the memory span of a goldfish. By the hour mark, you’re not sure if Diary of a Cannibal is a movie or an endurance test designed by the CIA.
The Romance: Nicholas Sparks Meets Hannibal Lecter
The film desperately wants to frame this cannibalism as a love story. That’s right: The Notebook, but with entrails. Noelle and Adam’s relationship is depicted through long stares, bad poetry, and dialogue so clunky it could be used as blunt force trauma. At no point do you believe these two are in love. At best, they’re in a Craigslist transaction gone wrong.
Their conversations about “becoming one” sound like a high schooler’s first attempt at writing dark fanfiction. At one point, Adam tells her he “longs to live inside her forever.” Subtle, right? And when she finally carves him up, the movie treats it like a tragic but beautiful consummation. Honestly, it feels less like romance and more like a deleted scene from a Food Network Valentine’s Day special.
The Pacing: Eternal Recurrence of Boredom
Diary of a Cannibal is 82 minutes long but feels like a biblical punishment stretching into eternity. That’s because Lommel pads the runtime with endless shots of desert landscapes, prison corridors, and people walking slowly toward the camera like they’re modeling in a Sears catalog. Scenes drag on long after the point has been made, which is ironic because the movie never had a point in the first place.
Even the cannibalism is boring. You’d think the one hook—pun intended—would be the actual act of cooking and eating a lover. Instead, it’s filmed with the energy of someone making ramen at 2 AM. By the time the credits roll, you’re not horrified—you’re just glad it’s over.
The Production: A Buffet of Laziness
Shot in Venice, California, and Pearblossom, the film makes no effort to disguise its low budget. The desert warehouse is clearly a furniture store. The prison looks like an abandoned YMCA. The pig organs are… well, pig organs. Even the title feels half-assed: Diary of a Cannibal. Spoiler: there’s no diary. Not a single written entry. Not even a voiceover that could pretend to be one. Lommel just slapped a word on there hoping it sounded artsy.
It’s also worth noting that Lommel originally rejected another director’s take on the story for being “too gory.” This is hilarious, because the result is a movie that’s not scary, not shocking, and not entertaining. It’s like making a roller coaster but replacing all the drops with escalators.
The Reception: United Nations of Hate
Critics didn’t just dislike Diary of a Cannibal—they buried it. Dread Central gave it half a star out of five. DVD Verdict called it “a migraine on film.” Bloody Disgusting named it one of the worst horror films of the year. And Something Awfulpractically wrote a dissertation on how much it sucked. It’s one of those rare movies that unites humanity across borders, languages, and cultures under one universal truth: this thing is garbage.
Final Thoughts: The Only Thing Consumed is Your Time
Diary of a Cannibal is not horror. It’s not romance. It’s not drama. It’s not even a movie in the traditional sense. It’s a glorified student film stretched into feature length by repetition, incompetence, and pig guts.
Watching it feels like being eaten alive, except less exciting. It takes a story that could have been an intense psychological horror and turns it into a glorified PowerPoint presentation about why Ulli Lommel should not be allowed near a camera.
Final Score: 0.25 pig hearts out of 5.
Because the scariest thing here isn’t cannibalism—it’s realizing Lommel made dozens of movies just like this.
