Human Hibachi 2: Feast in the Forest is the second film this week that was a sequel to a film I had not watched. In this case, that film was 2020's Human Hibachi, a found footage horror that was set in a restaurant for cannibals. The sequel moves the action to woodland, always a cheaper location for horror films to be based at. This was again written and directed by Mario Cerrito (The Listing) and brought a couple of the original cast back.
This begins with some title text explaining how the snuff film 'Human Hibachi' had been intercepted by police and subsequently leaked online, with all but two of the perpetrators being arrested. Having seen the movie, a family of woodland rednecks have become obsessed and inspired by it, leading them to take up cannibalism for themselves. They hope to make their own movie, with the intention to succeed where the first filmmakers failed, by selling their cannibalistic snuff movie on the dark web. They have also heard rumours that the two people who escaped justice are now living rough somewhere in the woods they also live in, so hope to find them so they can show their appreciation by giving them a feast to remember.
While an indie horror movie, I expected this to be a lot rougher than what it actually was. The found footage idea is used for all the shots here, though sometimes that doesn't make sense within the context of the film, with both the footage actually being shot mixed in, along with first person perspective sequences from people that aren't actually filming anything. Much of the first half of the horror has the redneck brothers out in the woods capturing and cooking unsuspecting victims. This was the better of the two halves, and I liked how they would sit around discussing what they were going to do. The second half mainly takes place at the remote family home, where the titular feast is created for Doug Patrick (Jeff Alpert - Human Hibachi) who they have finally located. It was this second half where some of the film's issues came about, mainly a lack of much plot.
The feast scene is long and mainly involves the characters sat around a table of body parts, laughing at how evil and twisted they all are, commenting on how the meat tastes, while making painfully bad 'dad jokes' about the body parts they are consuming. The story stalled here with not much really going on, until the twist epilogue which I'm assuming brought more from the first movie to this sequel. There was one key line from Doug which seemed big enough for the change in tempo in the film's score, but a line that I couldn't understand even after skipping back a few times to try and make out what was said. Other than that though, I had no trouble with the dialogue, a good sound mix meant much was easy to make out.
There are of course scenes of violence, with such fun highlights as a man being forced to cut off his own private part (subsequently used by his captors for fishing!), and a fun first person perspective from a victim who is getting sawn up with a chainsaw. Suitably bloody moments, and the eating scenes featured what I assume was real meat mixed in with more obvious fake body parts. None of the food looked appetising, I can say that much! Many of the victims are killed straight away rather than being made to suffer, with the exception of a couple of characters. I'm never a fan of long scenes of needless torture, so I'm glad that often this all happened away from the camera.
The subject matter of Human Hibachi 2: Feast in the Forest wasn't to my liking, but I was prepared to feel a little queasy, I was also prepared to feel a little bored, gladly I was only the former. While I would have liked more going on storywise, the characters mainly were decent enough, found footage horror films shown from the perspective of the antagonists isn't a new idea, but it does make for entertaining movies. I did feel I missed out on some context having not seen the first movie, especially when it came to the epilogue, but being mainly made up of new characters I never felt that lost.
SCORE:
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