Following the death of his wife, a broken man spirals into an abyss of night tremors and depression and finds himself in the home of a deranged cannibal who convinces him to take his own life in the most horrific way imaginable.
Grimmfest Says: Seemingly inspired by the real-life case of the German cannibal, Armin Meiwes, and his willing victim, Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes, FEED ME is a film which defies easy categorisation. Starting off in apparently serious, low-key, naturalistic vein, it delivers a sudden, unexpected curveball with the jarring introduction of Lionel Flack, the killer; an odd, improbable, cartoonish figure, with a dubious “Texan” accent, ridiculous cowboy hat and 70s dress sense, who seems to have strayed in from an entirely different kind of movie. And that’s when things start to get really interesting. Veering wildly between an emotionally weighty exploration of bereavement and suicidal depression, farcical, pitch-black, very British comedy of bad manners and social awkwardness, and squirm-inducing cannibal serial killer horror, the tone here isn’t so much uneven, as suffering from a multiple personality disorder. And this is not in any way a criticism. The original case is itself so grotesque and bizarre, that perhaps the only effective way to recast it as fiction is to abandon any attempt at realism, likelihood or plausibility, and lean right into the pure strangeness of it, amping up the grotesquerie into Theatre-of-the-absurd ridiculousness. Aided by agile performances, which do a fine job of shifting along with the film’s unpindownable tone, and beautifully visualised, with fluid, beautifully lit cinematography, and extraordinary production design, mixing the stylised grimy squalor of DELICATESSEN or HOTEL POSEIDON, with the ugly heightened dirty realism of Fateh Akin’s deeply uncomfortable THE GOLDEN GLOVE, this is thrillingly unpredictable, seat-of-the-pants cinema, which will leave you constantly wondering precisely how you are supposed to be reacting, as the style switches around from moment to moment, between broad comedy, pathos, horror, surrealism, and satire, in truly head-spinning fashion. Weird, wild, wired, and what-the-fuck-did-I-just-see nightmarish, we promise you, you really haven’t ever experienced anything quite like it.