Welcome to the Grill of Broken Dreams
There are bad movies. Then there are Swedish comedy-horror movies about cannibal fast-food empires that massacre American exchange students in the name of hamburgers. American Burger proudly plants its grease-stained flag in the latter category — a cinematic wasteland where humor goes to die, horror forgets to show up, and logic is ground up like so much mystery meat.
Directed by Johan Bromander and Bonita Drake (who, based on this, should perhaps consider opening an actual burger stand instead of making films), this 2014 atrocity follows a group of American teenagers who take a field trip to a fictional European country named “Kraketch” — which sounds like an IKEA sofa and smells like bad satire. There, they encounter a burger factory run by a homicidal butcher who turns tourists into patties.
It’s supposed to be a horror-comedy. What it actually is, however, is the cinematic equivalent of eating raw hamburger: you know immediately it’s a terrible idea, but you can’t stop out of morbid curiosity.
The Plot (Extra Sloppy, Hold the Sense)
Our story begins with the most stereotypical group of high schoolers ever assembled: The Nerds, The Jocks, and The Cheerleaders. You know the drill — “Fat Nerd,” “Nice Cheerleader,” “Quarterback,” “Camera Nerd,” “Wonky Eyes Nerd” (yes, that’s really his name). This is not a script written by people who went to high school — it’s one written by people who once read a Mad Libs about high school.
Their teacher (Lena Bengtsson), an overly peppy woman who looks like she’s auditioning for a detergent commercial, leads them through Europe on a “culture trip.” Naturally, “culture” here means “being murdered in rural cannibal territory.”
Soon, the gang stumbles upon The American Burger Factory — a place so sinister that it might as well be sponsored by McDeath’s. The factory is run by the Demented Butcher (Fredrik Hiller), a man whose entire performance consists of shouting, sweating, and gesturing wildly like Gordon Ramsay possessed by Satan.
When the students arrive, he welcomes them with open arms — and then promptly orders his minions to kill them all. Cue chaos, screaming, and some of the least convincing chase scenes since Scooby-Doo Meets the Blair Witch.
Some students die. Some run away. Some deliver lines that sound like they were translated into English by Google Translate during a stroke. And somehow, in the end, it all adds up to… nothing.
The Characters: A Buffet of Blandness
Let’s be clear: these aren’t characters — they’re cardboard cutouts that occasionally make noise. The film is stuffed with stereotypes so broad they could double as parade floats.
-
Fat Nerd (Liam Macdonald): He’s fat. He’s a nerd. That’s it. His superpower is eating and running slowly.
-
Preppy Nerd (Benjamin Brook): A maple-scented Canadian mistake whose accent wavers between Toronto and utter confusion.
-
Nice Cheerleader (Aggy K. Adams): She’s nice. The film reminds us of this every five minutes, as if afraid we might forget.
-
Adorable Cheerleader (Madeleine Borg): Becomes progressively less adorable the more she speaks. Suffers from berry-induced lisping, which the movie apparently finds hilarious. Spoiler: it isn’t.
-
Wonky Eyes Nerd (Ben Thornton): The nickname says it all. He looks like a Wes Anderson character lost in a torture-porn parody.
-
The Teacher (Lena Bengtsson): So aggressively positive she makes Ned Flanders look nihilistic.
Every single one of them talks and behaves like they were raised inside a broken arcade game. Their attempts at humor land with the thud of an overcooked burger dropped on a linoleum floor.
By the halfway point, you’re not sure who you’re supposed to root for — but you are sure you want everyone to stop talking.
The Comedy: A Joke That Eats Itself
Theoretically, American Burger is a satire of American culture — a jab at junk food, consumerism, and U.S. arrogance abroad. In practice, it’s a 90-minute inside joke told by people who forgot the punchline.
Every “funny” moment is stretched until it wheezes. Every “ironic” twist feels like it was written by a screenwriter who’s never heard a human laugh. There are pratfalls, bad accents, and endless “tee-hee, Americans are stupid!” gags that might’ve been edgy in 1997.
At one point, the Demented Butcher discovers that one of his victims is Canadian and apologizes before setting him free. This is meant to be hilarious social commentary. Instead, it’s the only moment in the movie that’s both merciful and relatable — because we, too, want to be released from this nightmare.
Even the gore is played for laughs, but the effects are so cheap that it feels like watching a middle-school Halloween play where someone forgot the ketchup packets.
The Horror: Scary Only for the Crew’s Resumes
There’s a fine art to mixing comedy and horror — balancing tension and absurdity, fear and laughter. American Burgerdoesn’t understand this art. It doesn’t even know which genre it’s in.
One moment, it’s trying to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre for vegans; the next, it’s doing a parody of EuroTrip. The result is tonally schizophrenic: not scary enough to horrify, not funny enough to entertain, and not self-aware enough to be meta.
The Butchers — our supposed antagonists — look like they wandered off the set of a Swedish cooking show. Their idea of terror is waving cleavers while grunting in fake Eastern European accents. At no point do they seem threatening; at best, they’re confused day laborers wondering how they ended up in this movie.
By the time the first student dies, you’re less horrified than impressed that the film remembered it was supposed to be a horror movie.
The Production: Served Cold, Cheap, and Slightly Undercooked
From a technical standpoint, American Burger looks like it was filmed entirely on a GoPro strapped to a nervous pigeon. The lighting ranges from “too dark to see” to “blinding enough to tan.” The editing has all the rhythm of a meat grinder.
The set design is equally tragic. The “American Burger Factory” appears to be an abandoned warehouse with a few flags taped to the wall. The props look like they were bought in bulk from a dollar store marked “discount abattoir décor.”
Even the score feels like a cruel prank. Every chase scene is accompanied by jaunty elevator music that could have been borrowed from Animal Crossing.
It’s as if the filmmakers were actively daring the audience to give up.
The Ending: Fast-Food Nihilism
Eventually, a few survivors — including the Teacher, Fat Nerd, and Adorable Cheerleader (now 80% less adorable) — escape in the school bus. The Butchers give up. The heroes drive off. And that’s it.
No resolution. No payoff. Just the cinematic equivalent of a manager shrugging and saying, “We’re out of fries.”
The final punchline — that the Canadian gets spared for not being American — tries to land as social satire but instead thuds like a dropped patty. If this was supposed to make a statement about globalization, cultural arrogance, or the evils of capitalism, it got lost somewhere between the script and the garbage disposal.
Final Thoughts: The Horror-Comedy Diet You Should Skip
Watching American Burger feels like ordering a Big Mac and getting slapped with a raw onion. It’s messy, unsatisfying, and you’ll regret every bite.
It wants to be Shaun of the Dead meets Hostel, but it’s more like Dumb and Dumber meets Food Poisoning. The humor is stale, the horror nonexistent, and the performances flatter than a week-old bun.
If the goal was to make Americans look dumb, mission accomplished — but mostly because any American watching this will lose 20 IQ points just trying to follow the plot.
Verdict: 1 out of 5 stars.
American Burger is cinematic junk food — greasy, tasteless, and guaranteed to leave you questioning your life choices. The only massacre here is of comedy, coherence, and your precious time.
