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SYNOPSIS:
Over a long holiday weekend, unable to escape the confines of their sorority house, a handful of unsuspecting girls are left behind to enjoy the quiet sanctuary. The normal house staff including the chef has taken off for the weekend leaving the girls to fend for themselves. Thankfully someone was kind enough to send them a temporary replacement chef to cook their meals. However, when the girls start disappearing one-by-one, they begin to suspect something may not quite be right with - THE COOK.
MOVIE
REVIEW
With the cheap looking cover design, ensemble of unknown cast who probably will do anything for their 15 minutes attempt at fame (including stripping and acting in a horrible film) and cinematography that invokes home video makers feel to it, The Cook look and felt like a cheaply made horror that’s out to make a quick buck.
Basically The Cook is constructed by mixing cannibalism elements from the Hannibal Lector series with the stereotypical teenage girls issues flicks (so many of those out there, well if you need references, think Bratz) and saucing it up with overdose of teenage hormones overdrive cum lesbianism cum drugs. That’s all there is to The Cook.
The slasher chef needs no explainable motivation for hacking and murdering the female students up. He is just the temp Cook from Hungary that speaks no English (Yes, Hungary Cook, a unfunny joke that got repeated over and over again) and serves a mean spread of food that taste like chicken (as one of the food taster would say).
The victims in the Cook could be identified the type of girly stereotypes instead of their names. There’s the goody bookworm, the bimbo, the slutty, the vulgar one with attitude, the secret lesbian, the holy girl, the dominatrix and finally the good friend who is sporty.
There is very little fun in following how the cooking horror mess will turn out. Jokes were unfunny (have I mention that Hungary Cook joke?), acting were good if you compare it with homemade caliber and the gory stuff were as tame as going to a wet market to see butcher cutting meat up.
There isn’t much here except the plentiful nudity which could serve as a consolation prize for sitting through The Cook. The girls that stripped were pretty attractive and the events that leading up to it were pretty erotic, that is if you are into lesbian type of love. Particularly the forbidden tension between the holy girl and the dominatrix was fun to sit through and inspiring (if you are looking for such inspiration). The other nudity that was quite good occurs when the latent lesbian self satisfied herself in a bath tub while thinking of the girl that she is secretly having the hot for. It was a pity that the lead up to that scene wasn’t properly done or it could easily out rival the holy girl and dominatrix subplot.
If it’s isn’t obvious enough, the fun part of The Cook would be the erotic lesbian subplots while the attempt to pay homage to past slasher films were neither inspiring nor funny. If there anything I could change, I would like to reduce the focus on The Cook and turn on the spotlights on the girls instead. That would make it more worthwhile to watch The Cook.
SPECIAL FEATURES :
This Code 3 disc contains no special features.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
Mention earlier in this review, The Cook felt like it’s filmed with a consumer camcorder and it look very much bit like a home made video project. As a typical horror movie, The Cook also uses soundtracks to highlight the tense moments which meant that loud cue music might suddenly appear and it’s way louder than the volume of the dialogues so have the volume remote control in hand if you are playing this film late at night.
MOVIE RATING:
DVD
RATING :
Review
by Richard Lim Jr
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