Meat Grinder   Starring: Mai Charoenpura, Rattanaballang Tohssawat and Anuway Niwartwong 4Digital Media RRP: £15.99 ASIA3818 Certificate: 18 Available 23 August 2010

Mai is a woman who runs a meatball and noodle stall with little success... That is until she opens a shop using a recipe handed down from her ancestors. It proves to be highly profitable. However, Mai finds herself mistreating her little girl. In fact, history begins to repeat itself, in a reinaction of her own abuse as a child. Her increasing derangement means that the youngster isn't the only subject of abuse. For in the locked storage area of her property Mai has some secured living bodies in various stages of dismemberment ready for the meat grinder. When the local mafia turn up demanding money by extortion, a local admirer offers to help her. But Mai has her own way of dealing with the gangsters, and her new friend might just be getting too close...

The early scenes of Meat Grinder are somewhat confusing, as there is reference to some sort of legacy, but all we are subjected to is instant blood, torture and severed limbs. What would have made significantly more sense is to tell the story from the humble and apparently innocent beginnings of a woman and her noodle stall, and then introduce the admirer and see her business grow, only to reveal the gruesome reason for her success. The entire film seems non-linear and bizarrely out of context. We have to endure regular flashbacks to Mai as a small child, but the viewer will get the picture early on, so there's little point in forcing it to distraction.

This could have been an impressive impacting film if handled correctly, but all it does is jump on the torture porn bandwagon. I kept thinking, yes I know Mai is deeply traumatised as a result of her childhood, but stop harking on about it!

3

Ty Power