Basically, there are two kinds of cannibals featured in hundreds of human-eating-themed movies during the past century. Best broken down into the categories of "cannibals by choice" and "cannibals by necessity," many top films fall into one of these categories (as well as even more really poor ones). Note that for purposes of this discussion, one must forget all about the thousands of zombie movies (since zombies are no more human than vampires, werewolves, ALIEN-type extraterrestrials, mega-sharks, or any of a hundred other threats to mankind that lack objective, scientific proof for their existence). SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and EATING RAOUL are a couple of my favorite examples of cannibal-by-choice movies. On the other side, FRIED GREEN TOMATOES and A BOY AND HIS DOG are two of my best-loved cannibal-by-necessity films. HUNGER falls into the class of cannibal-by-necessity flicks, though the characters put into a totally implausible circumstance disagree among themselves as to whether the necessity justifies cannibal-by-murder (since there's also the option of waiting until someone dies of "natural" if unusual causes BEFORE starting to eat them). Unfortunately, what could have been a riveting movie in the hands of the directors of the four films referred to above comes off more like something directed by Ulli Lommel or Uwe Boll under Steven Hentges' control. Especially off-putting are all of the scenes featuring the mis-named character ("The Scientist") who is responsible for the rest of the cast's SAW-like predicament. The repetitious shots of this creep at his control board bring to mind Lommel at his worse, while the flashbacks to the pre-teen "scientist" eating his dead mom after an isolated car crash smacks of Boll at his most tawdry depths of exploitation.
Review of Hunger
