One aspect of horror that I feel is overlooked is grounding it. Putting a story firmly into a real life world. Sure, Aliens was a great horror movie, but it doesn’t feel like you need to worry about it. When was the last time you were part of a colony setting up a civilization on a distant planet? That’s what I thought.

However, when was the last time you had an awkward encounter with someone in a convenience store? Don’t get me wrong, not every random moment of an awkward convenience store encounter ends with being hit by a car and waking up in a pretty woman’s house. Hmmm, just got a bit ahead of myself there. That’s how this movie starts. We meet Mark and Ash and the two of them are both trying to grab the same bag of chips, resulting in neither of them getting it as it falls to the ground. Followed by an awkward discussion of said chips. Mark then acknowledges how awkward it is and leaves. Once outside though, he gets hit by a car driven by Ash. Sure, he left first, but she managed to get to her car and then accidentally hit him, knocking him out bad enough that she drove him home and got him inside her place. 

The two of them have a quirky and fun little bit of interaction together before she takes him back and drops him off. What transpires for the next 20+ minutes is a couple getting to know each other and figuring things out in their lives. 

All that changes though when Mark takes Ash to a restaurant where she sees someone she apparently knows. She makes him leave as she appears to then be on a date with this new person. Something is obviously awry with this relationship. It takes an extra turn when Mark then watches her kill him in the park. 

How do you handle it when your new love interest kills someone in the park? You help them dispose of the body, of course. This turns into a bit of a gender swapped Dexter story as Ash explains to Mark that the people she kills are very bad. She does research to make sure they are terrible people. She then creates a situation where they approach her and engage in their depravity towards her. Now with Mark’s help, they ramp things up a notch. It reminded me of the season of Dexter where he teamed up with the woman named Lumen. I really liked that season and was bummed out when she became “free” of her personal Dark Passenger. 

For me, this movie scratched an itch that Dexter had left unscratched when Lumen walked away from Dexter.

The worst thing about this movie is the title. It does the movie a disservice. Not because it isn’t relevant to the movie, it is. Ash “works” as a Mukbanger (does it get the ‘er’ added to it? Not sure, but I did it anyway, so there.) If you don’t know what that is, it is someone who posts videos of them loudly and graphically eating online. If you did know what it was…. you weird! And as can be worked out from the title, she also eats people. Again, the title isn’t inaccurate. But when I saw this title, it didn’t make me want to check out the movie. But taking a chance on random movies tends to be a thing I do. I like finding things that are outside the popular zeitgeist. Hidden gems that fly under the radar. Often those are shuffled into the deck and I have to deal out 5 or 6 bad ones before I find the Ace (not sure if I am mixing a metaphor or making some sort of Frankensteinian analogy. And now I want to use the word Frankensteinian on a regular basis!)

The main drawbacks to this movie, honestly, was the ending. I don’t feel like it is bragging saying that I knew what the ending was gonna be. About halfway through I knew exactly how the movie was going to wrap up. At least from the perspective of what would that climactic scene entail. As far as the specifics about how that would play out, it could have gone a few ways, and I won’t go into which way it resolved. Something that was fun in this was that Ash referred to Mark as “Brain Damage.” A slightly rude but endearing nickname she used for him after finding out that he had been in a car accident and had a metal plate in his head. Visually it was absolutely an homage to ChopTop from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Something I appreciated on several levels.

One advantage to watching a lot of really bad movies is that when one is unexpectedly good, it tends to shine brighter than it might otherwise have. Seven stars is a nice shine. This is definitely worth taking the time to watch, and I truly think it could have had a better reception with a different name.