Anthropophagus 2

An Italian slasher/exploitation flick with a kick! It is a bit of a throwback to ten years ago when these genre flicks were made on a treadmill and the cravings for gore were satisfied very often, but today it is a rarity and I am happy that at least the Italians have come up with a flick from my favorite subgenre. Plot-wise, the film could be described in two sentences, it's very simple. A bunch of female students go to an anti-nuke bunker for the night to get ideas for their bachelor thesis, only to find a cannibalistic mutant who likes fresh meat lurking there. Pleasingly, the director took the trouble to choose pretty Italian girls who are nice to look at. The direction of the film is surprisingly up to par, the craftsmanship is decent (yes the acting and dialogue are not great, but the technical side is very decent, including the make-up effects and the gore). The mutant also looks good and is a decent nutter, plus he gets the show moving very quickly, so the viewer doesn't have to wait 50 minutes for a introduction, in the first minute dinner is served in the form of a toddler. The gore is good and there's plenty of it (a decent body-count too). The scalping and skinning can be decently uncomfortable and the eating of guts and brains is always a pleasure. Occasionally the camera does wander, but I don't think it was the budget, rather the filmmakers were afraid to cross the line where they thought this would be too much. The film is objectively at 3 stars, but since this my favorite sub-genre where all the main attributes are adhered to and the film moves along briskly, I'm happy to rate it higher. 7/10. (16.11.2023)