If there’s one thing the Belgians have given us — aside from waffles, chocolate, and existential despair — it’s Cannibal(2010), a horror film so bleak and slow you’ll feel like you’ve been trapped in the woods with an introverted taxidermist and a human-eating femme fatale for a week. Directed by Benjamin Viré and starring Nicolas Gob and Helena Coppejans, this is less a horror film and more a PSA on why you should never pick up unconscious women in the forest.
At its core, Cannibal is a movie about two lonely people who find each other — one agoraphobic hermit, one man-eating psychopath — and try to make it work. It’s like The Shape of Water if Guillermo del Toro had been replaced by a tax accountant with seasonal depression.
🍖 Plot Summary: “Love Bites” Taken Way Too Literally
Our hero (a word I use loosely), Max, is an agoraphobic who lives alone in the woods, which immediately makes him either a tragic recluse or a serial killer in training. He spends his days chopping wood, drinking coffee, and, inexplicably, playing golf — the least sexy and least outdoorsy activity imaginable. It’s the kind of hobby that screams, “I’ve given up, but I still have clubs.”
One day, while minding his own business (and apparently violating every safety rule of solitary forest living), Max stumbles upon a young woman — naked, unconscious, and covered in blood. Naturally, instead of calling the police like a functioning adult, he does what every European arthouse protagonist does: he drags her home.
She wakes up, looks around his cabin, and — instead of screaming or reporting her abductor — just starts living there. This is the point where most viewers start to realize that logic has fled the film like a vegan at a barbecue.
But soon, Max learns the truth: this mysterious woman, Bianca, seduces men and then eats them after sex. She’s like a praying mantis with better lighting. Her victims don’t just die — they’re devoured. You’d think this would put a damper on their relationship, but instead, Max decides to become her personal cleanup crew.
Love, as they say, makes fools of us all. In Cannibal, it just makes you complicit in homicide.
💀 The Romance: Fifty Shades of Flesh-Eating
At some point, Cannibal attempts to convince us that Max and Bianca share a genuine emotional bond. He’s a loner afraid of the world; she’s a carnivorous nightmare in lipstick. Together, they’re like the world’s worst dating app success story.
There’s tenderness — awkward, sweaty tenderness — as he tends to her wounds, feeds her soup, and looks at her like a lost puppy who’s seen Hannibal one too many times. She gazes back, silently calculating whether she can sauté him in garlic butter.
They develop something resembling love — or maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome with subtitles. But when Bianca is kidnapped (presumably by someone who likes their dates medium-rare), Max decides to face his fears and rescue her. It’s the kind of grand romantic gesture that says, “I know she eats people, but she’s my people-eater.”
🧠 The Writing: Less “Psychological Thriller,” More “Slow Wi-Fi”
If you’re expecting dialogue, pacing, or anything resembling a plot structure, you’re out of luck. This movie moves slower than a hungover snail. There are entire sequences where nothing happens — and I mean nothing. Max chops wood, stares into the distance, and breathes heavily while violins whine in the background like mosquitoes at a funeral.
The script seems allergic to words. Most of the film is communicated through long stares, awkward silences, and the occasional scream. It’s like the director watched Drive and thought, “What if we removed all the action and doubled the brooding?”
The horror itself barely qualifies as horror. There’s almost no gore on screen — ironic, given the title — and the kills happen mostly off-camera. The film clearly wants to be an arthouse meditation on isolation and desire, but it ends up looking like a student film about emotional constipation.
🎭 The Acting: Staring Contest Champions of 2010
Nicolas Gob plays Max as if he’s auditioning for the role of “guy who forgot his antidepressants.” He’s quiet, twitchy, and perpetually looks like he’s about to cry or sneeze. He nails the “lonely hermit” vibe, but after an hour of watching him wander around his cabin, you start rooting for the cannibal.
Helena Coppejans as Bianca fares a little better, mostly because she doesn’t have to say much. Her performance is 80% glaring, 10% nudity, and 10% licking things that aren’t food. She’s mysterious, alluring, and terrifying — the cinematic embodiment of “do not bring home from the bar.”
Together, their chemistry is about as natural as microwaved steak. It’s the kind of romance where you’re never sure if they’ll kiss or kill each other — and honestly, you stop caring which by the halfway mark.
🎬 The Direction: Mood Over Meat
Director Benjamin Viré clearly watched Let the Right One In and thought, “I could make that, but slower.” He’s aiming for moody, atmospheric horror, but it ends up as 90 minutes of fog, forests, and frustration.
The cinematography is beautiful — haunting, even — but it’s beauty in service of boredom. Every frame looks like a perfume ad filmed by someone in therapy. The problem is that Cannibal mistakes stillness for suspense. It’s not meditative; it’s sedative.
And while the film looks good, it has the emotional depth of a taxidermy exhibit. You can tell Viré wanted to explore the tension between love and monstrosity, but it feels like he left the script in the dryer too long and shot whatever survived.
🩸 The Horror: “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (and Probably Eating You)”
Despite its title, Cannibal contains shockingly little cannibalism. There’s one decent moment of implied gore, but otherwise, it’s all suggestion. The only thing devoured here is your patience.
It’s not scary, it’s not gory, and it’s not erotic enough to be titillating. It’s just… awkward. There’s a long history of cannibal films — Raw, Trouble Every Day, The Green Inferno — that use human consumption as a metaphor for obsession or domination. Cannibal uses it as an excuse to film another scene of someone staring at soup.
Even the big finale, where Max decides to “save” Bianca, fizzles out into nothing. You expect a gory showdown or at least some karmic justice. Instead, you get more slow-motion shots of people looking pained in candlelight. It’s less Texas Chainsaw Massacre and more Belgian Chainsaw Ennui.
🍷 The Tone: Pretentious With a Side of Raw Flesh
Cannibal wants desperately to be profound. It wants to say something about human nature — how love consumes us, how desire devours the soul, how isolation eats away at our sanity. Unfortunately, it’s hard to take any of that seriously when your movie’s moral compass is a guy who says, “Sure, she eats people, but I can fix her.”
The film’s real horror is existential: the dread of realizing you’re still watching it.
⚰️ Final Thoughts: The Longest Dinner Date From Hell
In theory, Cannibal could have been an interesting psychological horror about love, fear, and appetite. In practice, it’s an endurance test where the scariest thing is the runtime.
It’s moody but not meaningful, artsy but not artistic, and slow enough to make you wonder if your streaming service is buffering. You could cut this movie in half, and you’d still have time left over for a sandwich — preferably one without people in it.
🩸 Final Rating: 1 Out of 5 Digestive Tracts
One point for atmosphere, none for storytelling, and negative ten for making me sympathize with a man who hides bodies for his girlfriend.
Cannibal is what happens when a filmmaker tries to make Blue Valentine for cannibals and forgets that horror needs, well, horror.
It’s a love story for anyone who thinks “I can change her” applies to women who eat human flesh.
