Film Review: RAW (2016)

Cannibal films don’t get as subversive as the French horror film Raw (2016), a new look at cannibalism from the mind of writer/director Julia Ducournau.  Garance Marillier is Justine, a first year freshmen at one of the very best Vet schools in the world.  It also just so happens to be where her older sister Alexia (Ella Rumpf) is also enrolled as it is in the family business which includes the fact that Justine and her whole family are vegetarians.  When Justine gets to school her and her fellow freshmen are subject to hazing which includes eating rabbit livers.  At first, the eating of meat causes her to have and allergic reaction but then she starts to have uncontrollable cravings for meat.  

Everything changes when she has the taste of human flesh and then her world is turned upside down.  It is only her sister Alexia that can help her but will she accept guidance from a sister whom she’s had great animosity towards and can she really find a way to stop the cravings before they consume her?

Ducournau crafts a slow burn of a thriller in which you watch Justine’s transformation into cannibal and is her coming of age story as the cravings allow her to drop her guard and experience life like she never has before.

The film is definitely not for everyone as like many French horror films it goes dark and to extreme places that will put off most audiences but if you stick with it you will experience a film unlike any you have before and it will be totally worth it.  Both Marillier and Rumpf give astounding performances as sisters which is at the heart of the film.  This is amazing film that you won’t soon forget.

Film Review: THE LAST SUPPER (2005)

Based on the novel by Kei Oishi, The Last Supper (2005) is a psychological horror film in the vein of anything that you might find in a Hannibal Lector film…except on a much smaller budget.  This Japanese bargain basement production (with a budget of barely $400,000) tells the story of Dr. Yuji Kotorida (Masaya Kato) who is a renowned surgeon who also happens to kill and eat people.  When a co-worker asks him to provide the meat for her wedding, Kotorida sets about to craft the most exquisite meal anyone has ever set their eyes on.

Written and directed by Osamu Fukutani the film suffers from its low budget as it tries to straddle the fence between psychological thriller and gore film.  At times it suffers as it uses flashbacks to show how Kotorida got to where he was and if you’re into the slow burn then this film will be right up your alley.  If you are not, then a lot of the elements that I just described may have you turning off the remote before the end of the film but I have to say that the ending is definitely worth the buildup as it is something you won’t soon forget.   

The film lacks refinement and is pretty sub-par when compared to any of the films in the Hannibal Lector franchise but those looking for something different and can look past the low budget may find an engaging film.

Book Review: PANIC IN LEVEL 4 by Richard Preston

I’ve been a fan of writer Richard Preston since reading his non-fiction book The Hot Zone many years ago.  He’s always found a comfortable place dealing with killer viruses as a subject in subsequent novel The Cobra Event and his other non-fiction work the Demon in the Freezer but with his novel Panic in Level 4 (Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science) we delve deeper into Preston’s obsession with killer viruses as well as other subjects.

Panic in Level 4 may be an ode to get Preston’s big fan base interested in this anthology novel where he describes his first hand knowledge of what it was like to go into the CDC into Level 4 (the most dangerous level in the facility of which only the most contagious and deadly diseases are studied), described in his lengthy Introduction and the chapter “The Search for Ebola”, but he also delves into the mystery of mathematics and discovering the meaning of Pi (“The Mountains of Pi”), the artistry of the seven unicorn tapestries (“The Lost Unicorn”), the disease that is Lesch-Nyhan (“The Self-Cannibals”), a continuation of his exploration of the redwood canopies started in his novel The Wild Trees (“A Death in the Forest”),  and the Human Genome Project (“The Human Kabbalah”).  This is as diverse a subject matter as any of Preston’s previous books.

At the heart of the book is a preoccupation with disease as most evident in “The Search for Ebola” and “The Self-Cannibals” but it is also part of the problem faced in the destruction and extinction of the trees in “A Death in the Forest” and the human nature of the relationship between the Gregory and David Chudnovsky who are “one brain with two bodies” and are their own self destructive disease.  These stories not only delve into disease and obsession but in the nature of the characters presented in each story as Preston becomes an integral “member of the family” in the lives of the characters that he is writing about.  Preston’s writing is not just of the detached observer but a willing participant who gets into his characters’ lives in order to not only better understand them but the so called disease that threatens them.  Being the shortest of the chapters “The Lost Unicorn” stretches this a bit but it does focus on “time” being the disease that threatens the continual existence of seven tapestries which have survived and persevered through their own personal journey and heart-ache which is reflected in their beauty.

Preston has crafted another book that belongs within his cannon of other books and sheds light on his many other interests (in addition to that of his killer viruses) that will go far in establishing that he is still one of the best journalist and non-fiction writers out there.