I am reminded of another gross-out movie called Grotesque that I reviewed back in January. It is movies like these whose whole purpose is to push the censorship of films and see how much they can get away with. As the landlord and his thugs slurp down Bus’ noodles and devour the bits and pieces of human meatballs, I realize there is no real plot here as I totally ignored the narrative. Oh, I mentioned human meatballs. You didn’t misread that. Our lead is a female psychopath who grinds her victims into meatballs for noodle soup and eventually, for consumption.

Meat Grinder is an extreme cult Asian horror flick, which means that she goes about her killing spree with such determination that it becomes more chilling. There’s a warning message preceding the opening credits that I found hilarious as the censors have put a disclaimer so the general public doesn’t go believing that all Thai noodle vendors are going to cut you up and serve you to their next customers. Since this basically a torture movie, the storytelling and tone is impossible to define.

The bloodiness just escalates as more prey turn up. Also, while the plot is thin, I can’t argue that this has a very high quality, both on the creepiness, and the level of gore. So overall, it is effective and yes, it is better than anything any American director could conjure up. A good time is spent showing us the back story of Buss which is good to know. It made me think about how it was similar to Sweeny Todd, but it’s not exactly the same. For one, this movie has more gore and no singing. Thai gore cinema has been really coming on of late and I’ve been watching more and more.

The only other thing I had an issue with is the music that was played during a part of the movie where shots of the couple having intimacy for the first time are spliced with scenes of dismemberment. The whole sequence was really twisted. I did say they explored some of her backstory and with that said one could argue that even though there are excessive scenes of torture scenes, it was done to show just how mad she had gotten over the years of her life. It’s all for the sake of the story, right? I’m not completely sure, but I can say if you’re a gore nut, Meat Grinder is a good time at the movies.