Rod Marquart: Cannibal (2007)

Watch "Cannibal (2007)"

Take a budding Nova Scotian film maker, two friends, a miniDV camcorder, a non-existent budget and a penchant for gore and you will have the recipe for an inspiring and uncomfortable film.

Cannibal is a 15 minute short film by director/producer/writer Rod Marquart. With the help of Stefan Schiebel and Jim D'Ambrogi (who acted and filled other positions) Marquart went into the Nova Scotian wilderness and in 24 hours filmed a movie that will both shock and disgust you.

The story is simple. A man and his baby are captured, murdered and eaten (at least the baby is) by a deranged cannibal living in the forests outside a small town in the Maritimes. There is no dialogue and the film stock, although digital, is manipulated to appear like a 70s low budget horror flick. The grainy out of focus aspect makes the film appear authentic as if watching actual events rather than a fiction out of a young man's imagination.

Marquart adds other techniques such as speeding up or slowing down scene movement, switching the footage from colour to either negative or black and white, and breaking up the gore with long shots of the forest and sky. It all combines to make the viewer feel as if they are participating in something that is not real yet still happening.

With all the techniques Marquart used to shock and disgust his viewers. The film would have failed without a great score. With no dialogue and little time to build an interesting story, it is the music that is most important. Marquart hits the mark with his selections. The viewer is never comfortable watching this film. We have all seen the brutality pictured here in so many other films so it is the music that ultimately never lets us feel untroubled about what we are witnessing. Marquart enters genius with the score he created.

Where the film falls flat is its believability of the main character. There are two main scenes to the film. The first is where the killer shoots, carves up, cooks and eats the baby he captured. The second occurs when the murderer moves on the father of the baby hacking him up with a machete. The baby scenes are done on camera, the father scenes off.

Marquart must have been inspired by the Italian directors of cannibal films from the 70s and 80s (such as Ruggero Deodato or Umberto Lenzi) for the baby scenes as they are so graphic. As for the hacking up of the father, Hitchcock and his penchant for suspense and tension rather than gore must have entered the mind of Marquart as we never see the father being brutalized only the machete hitting something off screen.

The baby scenes establish the killer as a methodic man who takes pleasure in eating human flesh. He is as cannibal first and foremost. You see him carve up the body and cook it. You see the pleasure he has in devouring the human flesh. It is what makes the father scenes so out of character (and where the film falls flat). The killer has the father tied prostrate to a tree with a hood over his head. The murderer then removes the hood so the father can see what is about to happen to him. The killer then proceeds, in a mindless bloodlust, to hack away; wailing time after time into the body of the father with his machete. Does this sound like the same person who lovingly devoured his prey, the infant of the father, in the previous scenes? If what was established in the first part is true, that this killer is a cannibal, then why would he destroy the flesh he would obviously want to eat seeing he spent so much time finding, capturing and tying up the man who is his prey. Does a butcher? It would be more in character if the film showed the killer carve up the father like he was a cow ready for slaughter.

Marquart, in a write up on the making of the film explained that the killer is both a lover of eating human flesh and a lover of killing for pleasure. The baby scenes show the former, the father scenes tried to show the latter. The killer may love to kill but he wouldn't hack apart the father as it would ruin the meat he will want to consume afterward.

Cannibal is Marquart's first film and with the budget and time constraints it is amazing the film turned out so well. It leaves a lasting impression. The blood and violence is a gore lover's wet dream but it is the film's score, ending with a remixed version of Nova Scotia experimental industrial rockers Drums and Machines' "It's Gonna Kill" that is the highlight of this film.

The making of "Cannibal"

Rod Marquart: Cannibal (2007) - Short Film

Review by:
Scott D. Brown

Related Links
The making of "Cannibal"

SMR: Short Movie Reviews
Sound Advice: CD Reviews

Back To Exposure Online Magazine