Gathering the will to finally start, a psychotic chef embarks on a cruel spree abducting whatever foreigner he can find off the streets of Los Angeles and turning them into the latest meals in his restaurant before he succumbs to a debilitating disease he caught from the meat he's served.
For the most part, this one was a pretty solid indie effort. One of its strongest elements is the rather dark and grim stylistic choice towards the more exploitative elements. The opening abduction of the French couple and the way they're toyed with and butchered gives the film a solid start with the brutality he dishes out. The scenes of him stalking the various tourists, from the guy in the hotel room to the other victim in the subway which all revolve around the chef and his assistant tormenting and playing around with their bodies before killing them. As all of this is clearly spelled out by the backstory at play that showed how he attacked and killed his family before eating them as a kid that spells out his backstory of mental imbalance, it makes for a pretty chilling setup at work. That adds a dark tone to the second half with a more detailed look at what's going on. The series of revelations that are made here about the characters' debilitating battle with Mad Cow Disease and how he's going around spreading that in the food he serves injecting his tainted blood into the prepared meals add a disgusting touch to the film. Since this is tied into his preferential treatment towards tourists who he's targeting to kill, the psychological insight into him this gives is quite striking that gets played out in grand detail with the xenophobic undertones at play within their torture methods. This ends up making for a strong, at times graphic and gory psychologically impressive effort with a menacing, imposing villain which is enough to really hold this one up. While this one does have a lot to like, there are a few minor flaws. Despite its best intentions, there's little it can do to ignore its low-budget trappings, plagued with horrible sound design that renders a lot of the dialog to be incomprehensible due to the on-location recordings. It's usually drowned out by the local elements at play in the scene or the echoey nature of the scene renders it virtually impossible to make out clearly, relying on the context of the scene to fill in the missing pieces. As well, the film's tendency to play as a straightforward ripoff of one of the biggest and most well-revered genre efforts ever due to replaying sequences exactly the same way and the same manner for several prominent scenes tips its hand rather easily about its influences and intentions. It's not too detrimental but does stand out somewhat in the film.
Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.
