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Indie flick with a special kind of meat pie.  Dark Sky can’t win them all.

For the most part Dark Sky Films puts out solid releases that any horror fan can pretty much guarantee they will want on their shelf.  The special editions they have released of such classics as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer have been breaths of fresh air into the horror genre.  Of course they have also brought indie flicks into the public eye, like Jim VanBebber’s The Manson Family, and changed their lives forever.  Unfortunately not every release can be gold, as made evident with the recent release of Gnaw. 

A group of friends make their way out to a bed and breakfast kind of place called Blackstock Farm.  Two couples and two singles make up the group, of course the goth and the dork are the only two single.  Not much is here by way of character development, save for one love triangle type of thing, there is mainly one problem facing all six friends.  From the moment they arrive on the farm they are served plenty of food, which in normally a good thing except when the ingredients are other humans.  After being fed human meat pies and such now this group is on their way to the dinner table by the hand of mad cannibals running the joint. 

With a very short running time, under 80 minutes, this British indie moves along rather quickly.  You kind of have to since 80 minutes is not much time for anything else.  The only real problem with doing a film this way is that it makes it hard to care for the characters when there is little time spent with them.  This can be accomplished with some movies, but here there are no strong feelings for anyone at the farm. 

What Gnaw does have in its favor is the food aspect.  Who has not had some fear of what could be in the meals they eat?  It’s bad enough when one of the characters pull some hair out of their mouth from the food, but that is only the beginning.  Eating one of your friends is much worse and the film plays well into how picky people are with the ingredients in their food.  Hey, at least it’s fresh. 

The only feature on the disc is a just under ten minute making-of and trailer.  While this film is not the best out there, and it does have a few good moments of ick and gore there is not enough to stick with you.  Might be worth a rent for the curious horror fan, but don’t expect to be blown away. 

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