movieman_kev Oh Ulli, why do I still act like a cinematic masochist by continuing to watch your unwatchable 'based on a true story' (albiet EXTREMELY loosely) waste of celluloid. Perhaps I've answered my own question. I AM a masochist, either that or the last true blooded optimist. Perhaps this one will be better. Maybe i won't long for the sweet embrace of death to keep me from viewing until the movie's end. Alas no. No such luck. i had to suffer through this spectacularly awful movie. Atrociously acted, shot worse than a student film. Unentertaining even in it's insipidness. DO NOT watch. DO NOT even let the idea enter your head.

DigitalRevenantX7 Story Synopsis: Dying in hospital of injuries suffered in a prison bashing, a young woman convicted of cannibalism is forcibly interrogated by a pair of detectives. She reveals to them how she met her boyfriend (who was secretly suicidal) on the Internet, the pair taking a cross-country trip where they arrive at a storage facility. There he tells her to kill him & eat his organs as an act of love.Film Analysis: Diary of a Cannibal is another of the cheap genre films made by Ulli Lommel. Lommel is a former German New Wave legend who had made the art-house hit Tenderness of the Wolves, based on the true story of a German gay serial killer, before abandoning that career after moving to the USA. Since then he has made several cheap films, mostly about serial killers (although there was one exception - a brainless film about a robot helicopter with mind control powers!).Diary of a Cannibal was one of the films Lommel made as part of his "Hollywood House of Horror" filmmaking group, one of a staggering number of serial-killer themed films (17 in less than half a decade!) made in such a short time. Like most of them, Lommel takes a true story & turns it into an abstract film. I say abstract because Lommel is not a filmmaker who makes straightforward films. Instead he repeats the same scenario over & over again with little variation, using all sorts of tricks to demonstrate his visual style.This is the fourth film Lommel film I have reviewed so far. The quality of his films has been see-sawing between bad & mediocre. This is one of his better ones, although still not good enough to be viewed more than once. Lommel, for a change, manages to take a fairly simple story & tell it in a (relatively) cohesive fashion. The subject matter is pretty grim - a young woman kills her lover & eats his flesh on his orders as the ultimate act of love - but it strangely makes you wonder how far someone will go for love. Lommel milks the concept for all the impact he can get. The ending, with the girl dying after telling her story, leaving the two detectives walking away arguing about whether she was right in doing so, will get under your skin.The acting is passable - Lommel gets some of his regular cast doing their thing with a modest efficiency. Jillian Swanson makes a strangely sympathetic heroine despite the deeds she performs in the film.

mrenzella Wow. In short: Do not subject yourself to this. Ever.In long: This is, in my humble opinion, one of the worst and most misleading "movies" I've ever seen. The box, and even the artwork on the disc itself, suggest a very different viewing experience than what you are about to get. This movie is AWFUL, and by that, I mean first-year experimental film student awful. How this P.O.S got funded in the first place, let alone distribution through Lionsgate, is beyond me. Oh wait, it has an enticing title, and box art that is reminiscent of recent horror fare in the vein of 'The Hills Have Eyes', so people who like horror flicks get duped into renting it. I knew renting it was a risk, as most direct-to-DVD horror flicks are frankly, garbage, but I was in the mood for some cheap slasher-style fun, what I got was 84-minutes of poorly shot, cheaply edited, flashbacks. This movie has about 6 scenes that are recycled over and over and over. There is little to no dialog, and whenever there is any, it is horribly Mic-ed, it sounds in places like it was actually in-camera audio, with no location audio used at all. There are headache inducing montages in which 2 or 3 shots are overlaid on top of each other, the acting is Z-grade level, the gore is laughably pathetic, and the whole concept was wasted. There is the bones of an interesting movie in the concept here, but with no character development, no real reason given for the events that transpire, beyond horribly pretentious and annoying bible quotes that appear randomly throughout, and no action to speak of, this just really angered and frustrated me. I actively beg you NOT to watch this movie. No one in their right mind will get any kind of enjoyment from this. Ulli Lommer, find another career, you obviously don't understand the first thing about making a movie.Mike Renzella

jamesabartles I rented this movie looking for a typical gore-fest a la Romero. Was I in for a disappointment. It turned out the be the worst 82 minutes I've spent in a long time. Something could have been done with the story, reputedly based on actual events, but it was not. The set and location shots must have cast the production company hundreds of dollars. The were endless flashbacks that conveyed nothing and were put in solely to add some time to the film. It's a shame that there isn't some sort of "Gong Show" system that would have nipped this one in the bud before it contaminated the viewing public. I don't recall having seen an Ulli Lommel film before but at least I am now forewarned to stay away. Please, if anyone recommends this movie to you, I would suggest that they immediately seek professional help and counseling.