As with most streaming services, the horror category is over bloated with direct to streaming, low budget disasters. That's not to say that there isn't the odd diamond in the rough out there, it's just a painstaking process searching for them. With a title like 'Cannibals and Carpet Fitters' I kind of already knew how this was going to play out but figured it was worth giving it the benefit of the doubt anyway. Strangely enough, popular 00's TV personality Alex Zane has top billing despite only featuring and being killed of in the opening 5 minutes. From then on the acting is to be as expected, with every performance being very unauthentic and most character iterations that feature heavy dialogue feeling rather overly acted and forced. The biggest culprit for this is Jenny Stokes who plays Mrs Hanning, the mother of the cannibalistic family. Every line she speaks feels like a poor imitation villain from a British pantomime. I have to assume the director decided that due to the shockingly assembled cast that it was a safer bet to not have one central focused character. And for me this is one element of this film that I actually enjoyed. Every time someone was introduced I was assuming that he/she would be our final girl/boy, yet just as you become attached to that person they tend to be killed almost immediately. Whether this was an intentional tactic or a deflection from the lacking talent on display remains to be seen, but it does manage to keep things feeling refreshing. The kills, whilst rather creative do feature some glaringly poor and heavily overlaid in CGI effects, nothing too distracting but it's clear it is low quality computer effects that don't quite line up with the actors behind them. The same can be said for the minimal practical effects that are used, with most of them being obvious latex plasters that use minimal effort to blend the make-up up to match the actors skin tone. If I'm being completely honest though, I wasn't expecting much from this, so the content we do get was quite a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, 'Cannibals and Carpet Fitters' fell victim to the enviable failure that it's lack luster title had already set it up to be. That's not to say there aren't a few moments of British humor and creative kills to justify the viewing, just certainly not enough for me to recommend it so anyone else endures a similar fate as I did.
💀1/2
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