Baddie – Cannibals!

Lesson – Man, don’t trust Dolce & Gabbana models with guns.

And now for something completely different!

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I feel like Sharknado really burned me out on creature flicks, and then The Reef was a great transition into people-type horror flicks, so this week I followed up Fear Island with Elfie Hopkins: Cannibal Hunter. And let me tell you. It was sheer delight.

Elfie is a British film, and it’s one of my new favorite movies. It has the sort of cheeky charm that I love about movies like Wild Target where it handles some tough issues with an effortless coolness. That’s right, a movie can be effortlessly cool.

I don’t want to pop any bubbles, but look at that poster. I was expecting a Machete type horror flick, and can you blame me? Even the title is misleading. What you see is not what you get – but what you get is so, so, so much better. It’s actually a sort of hipster/indie type movie, featuring a somewhat troubled Elfie who’s trying to resolve her feelings about her mother’s death. Parker, her faithful companion, has actually put his own life aside to help Elfie through this whole shebang. It lacks a few things that say, Juno might have (and I really do enjoy Juno). It’s not whiny. It’s fierce and sassy and somehow quiet and contemplative all at once. It’s effortlessly cool.

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So the plot is that a new family moves in. They specialize in sending people on long and expensive vacations. They are super mega weird. The son is like goth-David Beckham with a crossbow, and the daughter is Japanese Alice in Wonderland. The mom is one leather strap away from dominatrix status, resplendent in silks. The dad is charming, but just off-kilter enough to question. Of course, given the title of the movie, we go in knowing they’re cannibals, but the subtlety of the kills and the ‘hunting town’ motif keeps everything just a little bit mysterious.

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Most fashionable cannibals ever.

Did I mention that I really like this movie? I really like this movie. Things I didn’t like, however, included a somewhat abrupt ending to the movie coupled with some slow-motion clips, as though they were trying to trick the audience into believing the quick wrap-up by slowing down time. To their credit, the writers created cliched situations and embraced them fully then veered off-course all of a sudden. As you all know, I’m a firm believer that a horror movie needn’t pretend to be anything else.

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Hipster models or cannibal hunters?

Of course, that being said, this was a beautifully shot, wonderfully executed, surreal, somewhat drugged up movie. It’s available on Netflix, and I really do hope that at least one of you goes and watches it.