Sloppy Chunky Seconds: Gnaw (2008)

Gnaw (United Kingdom, 2006)

Rating: *1/2

Starring: Julia Vandoorne, Hiram Bleetman, Nigel Croft Adams

Ah, the "statistics opening". A sign that this is going to be a headache.

Wow, it's either I'm seeing too many of these movies or this one just forgot how to stand out. 

Once again, Europe's own youths are taking a journey to some peace and relaxation on the country side, renting a home who warmly welcomes them with an extravagant dinner table filled with meat-stuffed pastries and other home-made meaty by-products.

After setting themselves up for the weekend, the kids go through what is best described as an in-depth characterization as they go about their lives as realistic as they can in front of the camera. Pretty fair acting to be generous but it did killed the pacing, so what felt like forever was actually about 30 to 40 minutes on my watch. (And this is a 70+ minute movie!)

It's not too long before a killer in what appears to be a suit made up of hastily stitched pelts starts butchering them with farming and gardening tools, both man and gasoline powered, and stashing their flesh for food and meat pies. (Not like you can't figure that one out yourself)

Gnaw does everything by the book, which is at least something a good slasher movie should be proud of, but in its totality, this is barely the type of movie you will brag about. Or worth remembering.

Some predictable turn of events here and there, everything else is easily brushed off as your usual slasher shenanigans. Backwood slashers were always been the easiest in the sub-genre to exploit so it must be taken in mind that most people would try to do these films for entertainment and fun and I couldn't agree more! But I feel like Gnaw missed a few pointers on how to make a story worth remembering, even if most of its plot is taken from twenty other backwoods teen-killings out there. Sadly not even the killings, the very definition of this subgenre, helped since there isn't enough bloodletting to go around and the deaths are hardly memorable. (Well, unless you count the fact everybody's blood here appears to be black and thick instead of the usual watery crimson. Guess we're supposed to be glad these kids are dead, who knows what kind of disease they got in them blood!)

Rentable but you could do a little better. Better save this one for the slasher starter packs!

Bodycount:
1 female had her gut chunked off with a knife
1 male stabbed through the back with a pitchfork
1 female disemboweled with a chainsaw
1 male had his neck cut and tongue ripped out, killed
1 female killed offcamera
1 impaled with a knife handle
1 female implied murdered
Total: 7