Not to be confused with the wondrously rubbish GNAW : FOOD OF THE GODS II, this is actually a rare British entry (and, rarer still, a Suffolk-set entry!) in the traditionally American backwoods in-bred cannibal-teen slaughter sub-genre. While this adds a touch of novelty to the well-worn proceedings, there’s little else of note or originality to be found in a flick that is happy to throw its own set of obnoxious Brit characters into scenarios familiar from THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, WRONG TURN, et al.
The opening sequence – fashionably interspersed with WOLF CREEK-like statistics on missing persons to give the material some kind of inspired – by – real- events cachet – is so generic it could have come from any of the movies GNAW borrows from. A screaming young woman in her undies is chased through the woods, captured, chained to a table and tortured / gutted. Thereafter a group of twenty something friends encounter the usual bit of road kill – this time a dead cat – en-route to their unwise stay at “Blackstock Farm”, a middle-of-nowhere dwelling that probably has an ignored sign saying “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” somewhere round the back.
There they are greeted by a shifty-eyed old woman (gamely played by Carrie Cohen) who wins the Honorary Marty Feldman Award for Cheap puns when the secret’s out about what goes into her “Farmhouse Special” soup : “They say it tastes like chicken…nice to have your friends for dinner…”. The protagonists, prior to being minced and served up to the survivors for tea, are held captive and tormented by a surprisingly (for this sub-genre) non-deformed normal-looking skinhead who nonetheless drools impressively while yanking out a guy’s tongue with pliers.
GNAW is nicely shot on a low-budget, with moments of atmosphere and enough efficiency to suggest better movies will emerge on the resume of director Gregory Mandry. It’s pleasantly exploitative at times – one gratuitously naked girl is threatened with a chainsaw – and has nice touches like a pre-murder Scrabble game in which soon-to-be-victims spell out key words like “scythe” and “foetus”. Sadly, too much of the movie is unsurprising and routine, including its unremarkable wrap-up and an amusing but so-so punch line involving a snack van.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
