Horror Movie Review: Gnaw (2008)

I don’t know what it is at the moment but I keep stumbling across these low-budget British horrors that promise so much but inevitably fall well short of anything resembling quality. Gnaw is no different….

I chose to watch it based on a cover that depicted a burger about to be eaten. It’s a grimy setting & made all the worst for the fingers sticking out the side of the burger. I’m no fan of cannibal movies be the jungle tribe style (Cannibal Holocaust) or the mutated freaks type (The Hills Have Eyes). When it comes to eating flesh there is a line in the sand & I’m on the side with the zombies.

Like I said though…I was drawn in by the kick-ass cover.

The story is as basic as it comes….a group of friends are going on holiday in the English countryside. They find lots of food waiting for them & an ever gracious host, the old lady who owns the cottage. As the night goes on the group come under attack from a sadistic killer who wants to make them into food. Err…that is about it.

Oh there is a twist at the end that anyone who has ever seen a horror movie will see coming a mile away, it is that obvious.

So now that we have that epic story out of the way what was the movie like? In a word…terrible. No actually in more words…really, really terrible.

Let’s start with the biggest bunch of tools this side of a Scream movie. I don’t understand why groups of people go on holiday together when they can’t stand each other (2 couples, 1 single girl & 1 single guy). If you’re not friends why are you hanging out let alone spending a weekend in an isolated cottage together? Of course they have no signal on their phones. This is established in the most obvious way; a character gets out his phone holds it up & says ‘no signal’. Thanks for that….

So not only do this lot hate each other but 1 of the taken males is messing around with the single girls. Who goes on holiday with their missus & their mistress? That’s just asking for trouble. It might have been a half-decent angle had the acting been better. Instead it’s a shoddy angle designed to set up a shoddy ending. You see, the mistress? She is pregnant – she takes the test on this wonderful holiday. Good weekend so far huh?

Annoyingly the movie thinks it’s smarter then it is & keeps trying to do a ‘wink, wink’ kind of thing with the audience. Like the food that is available for them at the cottage, as they eat the pies & meat they say things like “oh this food is really good & wow, I wonder what is in this pie it tastes great”. Like we are all in on the joke that they are probably eating other people (this is the case). It was really annoying as it’s done several times throughout the movie.

So the killer…he wears a mask for most of the film but his freakish size makes it easy to guess who it is (check out the burger van dude at the start). It’s not like it matters as later he goes around without his mask & it’s not like a big revelation so it’s all a bit pointless.

His job is made all the easier by the sheer stupidity of victims. I mean they are so stupid….check this out: The first 2 to go are a 1 of the couple who decide to shag outdoors. He decides a blindfold will be kind of cool but the ground is too prickly so he goes back to the car to get a blanket. She for whatever reason decides to keep her blindfold on. She also fails to notice the difference between her boyfriends touch & a complete stranger. She even touches him back & gets picked up by him with her hands on his neck. How does she not know the difference?

Well she dies & so does her boyfriend, they both get put into the mincer which is shown in graphic glory. That was cool….

What follows is dumb people doing dumb things & getting killed before the big revelation. Do you want to know what it is? Ok….

SPOILERS

The woman who owns the cottage is the killers mother, she is in on the cannibalism & helps him out. Wow…who saw that coming? Except everyone!

So what do you think? Sound like a movie you want to see? Hold on there…I’m not finished.

The ending….

The last one alive is pregnant girl, she is captured by the killer & her last moment in the film is to scream. We get a, One Year Later, pop up & we are with killer as he looks in a crib. He pulps up some human remains & turns to feed the baby it. Kind of cool right?

Only when you stop thinking with any semblance of brain. With it only being a year later the baby could only be 4-5 months old yet the baby in the crib looks about a year old.

I was glad it was over after this.

It is this bad. I can’t think of any redeeming quality expect the level of gore. It’s a bad movie….avoid.