Cannibal Horror

Normally I walk away from a movie thinking, “I really loved [insert plot point here] ...but I would have really loved it if they’d done [insert my suggestion of a plot change here]". This usually ends up being what I would’ve done as the protagonist to have a better ending. Fresh makes all the decisions you as a watcher would make and even comes up with some you wouldn’t automatically think of to spice things up. Moments happen throughout that lead you to believe you know what will come next, but I found myself wrong every time.

Together Daisy Edgar-Jones and Sebastian Stan give such a compelling performance I almost believed she might be into him at one point despite him removing her glute muscles without her consent. While I am still side-eyeing Stan for playing Tommy Lee in another Hulu production he gives a stellar performance in Fresh. I can wrap my head around him being able to lure and even subdue captive women into his grasp while schmoozing up the vile clientele that order his cuts.

Enough dancing around the subject matter: Edgar-Jones is taken hostage by a new suitor, Stan, after some modern dating red flags are understandably ignored. While in captivity she learns that our man Stan is somewhat of a butcher for the bizarre. Not only does he harvest and sell human flesh, but he also consumes it. Allow me to introduce you to our first cannibal of the article, Steve, played by Sebastian Stan. Steve views his cannibalism as something that makes him superior and it’s more than alluded to that his clientele are of the wealthy variety. By the end of the movie, we can pretty much guess that a secret group of wealthy people, most of which are men, are casual cannibals who receive regular deliveries from Steve. 

In Steve’s circle cannibalism is just the next, reasonable step in one’s culinary journey if they dabble in the taboo long enough. By taboo I mean highly illegal, unethical, and immoral based on the methods Steve implores in his business. Leaving a wake of missing women in his path, only a wall of souvenirs exists as proof of Steve’s history and the depth of his career. Noa, our Portland based leading lady played by Daisy Edgar-Jones, can seduce Steve. She does this by appealing to his mind and showing a willingness to not only understand him but share a special meal with him. Of course, this meal is of the cannibal variety. 

Noa’s slow burn of an escape plan reaches a fever pitch in the third act of the film that I highly recommend watching. Faced with an evolving situation, new information, and other characters with their own intentions Noa makes the best decisions she can. All while her friend, Mollie, played by Jonica T. Gibbs investigates her disappearance and goes to get her back. At a time when I had grown tired of the same old horror plots, Fresh shocked me in the best ways and with unexpected subject matter I typically avoided. This intrigued me past just the plot of this movie but about cannibalism in general.

to Sanchez and thus the King and Queen of Spain about the encounters with Natives in the Americas. In one such letter Christopher Columbus wrote about the natives as if they were animals in awe of his group's arrival rather than a more accurate representation along the lines of needing to be saved by natives with vast knowledge of their environment.

Accounts like that of Columbus and Vespucci’s continued and the ideas they created spread until a strong narrative existed. This narrative allowed Native’s land to be taken and the natural resources, like gold and corn, to be claimed by the Spanish, Portuguese, and anyone else that felt they too stood to gain from imperialism. All of that pain and torment due to the idea that the Native owners of the land were “Godless people” unworthy of being treated better than an animal. Due to this historical context, we cannot in good faith trust European accounts of natives practicing cannibalism from at least this time period onward. Painting natives as savages who had become so depraved they practiced cannibalism and thus making stealing their lands and torturing their people for centuries an easier pill for perpetrators of imperialism to swallow.

As the saying goes, those in glass houses should not throw stones, and Medieval Age Western Europeans sure seemed to love stones. The most documented, widespread practices of cannibalism come from European groups. At the time these groups viewed their cannibalistic practices to be medicinal and thus acceptable. From a Medical News Today article one such common practice involved consuming crushed up mummified human remains all the way back in the 12th century called Mumia. This crushed powder became widely considered a cure-all drug being used as a blood thinner, cough suppressant, anti-inflammatory, and cure for epilepsy. Some physicians doubted its usefulness but that did not stop other practitioners from robbing graves when their supply of mummies ran low. 

However, it doesn’t stop with mumia, cannibalism in the West still exists, widely encouraged in some circles. Western, 21st century mothers have taken to saving and consuming their placenta post birth, which is technically cannibalism. Some companies even offer to dry and crush the placenta up and put that into a capsule for easy consumption. Mayo Clinic has reported on their website that consuming the placenta post birth, or placentophagy, can be of harm to the mother and the baby based on how it’s prepared. 

Two forms of cannibalism usually at the very least understood, are survival and famine cannibalism. Both types occur when facing imminent death due to harsh conditions forces one person to consume another person in order to survive. Famine cannibalism has happened during various human crises around the world and is also an occurrence of cannibalism out of necessity to survive.

Our lack of unbiased and unmotivated evidence of cannibalism makes it hard to discern fact from bias and historical re-telling from fiction. With the history barely untangled it’s clear why cannibalism's portrayal in horror movies would be as varied and complicated as it is. The interpretations of cannibalism serve as mirrors held up to society, a look at how we see something like cannibalism provides invaluable insights into how we view ourselves and each other.

Few portrayals are without the stain of bias however, bias against groups of people and ways of life, especially ones steeped in misdirection and confusion. Still, all of that aside, eating people is not an inherently good thing free of harm as it requires either death or suffering from the individual being eaten. Not to mention, it’s all rather gross.