Fantastic Fest: Meat Kills is an appropriately fleshed out fright fest
2CFilm & Paradise Media
Fantastic Fest 2025 is taking place in Austin, Texas right now, and the yearly indie/genre film fest has a bunch of cool, killer premieres. These films are either headed to theaters soon or are looking for distribution. Our film writer, Adrian Torres, is covering the new releases. Catch up on all these previews right here.
When movies have portrayed animal activism in the past, they tend to fall into two groups. Okja, Project X, and Legally Blonde: Red, White & Blonde champion the stoppage of breeding farms, animal testing, and the general preservation of all animals. Then there are the depictions of extremists who want to bring about change through acts of vandalism or destruction. In the case of movies like 12 Monkeys and 28 Days Later, things don’t turn out well.
Director Martijn Smits’ (Popoz) latest film, Meat Kills [Vleesdag], falls into that second group. While its small group of activists might not bring about the apocalypse, they do find themselves being put through a meat grinder when a liberation attempt goes south.
Mirthe (Caro Derkx) is fresh out of college and looking to fulfill the rebellious streak she feels inside. She has her sights set on joining “Animal Army,” a hardcore animal activist group based in her small Dutch hometown. Her good friend Humphrey (Tommy Zonneveld) has an inside connection, but is worried the group’s leader, Nasha (Emma Josten) won’t think Mirthe’s hardcore enough.
Surprisingly, Mirthe has this on lock. Taking advantage of her job at a local slaughterhouse, she films the inhumane killing process and hands it over to the group. Emboldened by their new spy, Nasha enlists Mirthe and group members Ishmael (Sem Ben Yakar) and Donna (Chardonnay Rillen), to head to the farm/slaughterhouse to free the pigs. When they get there, though, they find the place empty; the remaining pigs were seemingly killed earlier in the day. Nasha decides to teach the owners of the family-run slaughterhouse a lesson, but when patriarch Jonas (Bart Oomen) returns home, it’s the activists who finds themselves in a fight for survival.
Meat Kills is brazenly propulsive in its opening stretch. Paul de Vrijer’s script dashes through character introductions, knowing audiences want to get to the messy bits as quickly as possible. This doesn’t mean he cuts down on characterization. The film leaves enough gristle to chew on, making characters on both sides of the conflict sympathetic, only to later double down on their unlikability. It’s a shrewd way to get people invested in what happens, while making the film’s deaths immensely satisfying.
And those kills are spectacular. Practical effects are the name of the game and Meat Kills finds all manner of mean ways to dispatch its characters. This is a flick that goes the whole hog and then some. Continually upping the ante, right until a brutal final blow. Bodies (human ones) are sliced, crushed, impaled, eaten, vivisected, and gradually torn asunder through the film’s jaunty 90-minute runtime. Special mention goes to foley artist Mauro Eusepi, who puts on a masterclass of squishes, squelches, and crunches you can feel.
Meat Kills clearly takes a lot of inspiration from the French New Extreme horror movement of the early 2000s, with vibes that feel right at home alongside movies like Haute Tension, Frontier(s), and Inside. There’s a meanness to the gnarly proceedings, reflected expertly in the journey Mirthe goes on. She starts as a wayward kid just wanting to make a difference. After all the blood-soaked trauma, she becomes an emboldened force of survival and vengeance, capable of actions she would have never thought possible.
If grueling entertainment is your thing, Meat Kills scratches the itch for horror that’s lean, mean, and little in between. What it lacks in subtlety it more than makes up for in practical gore. It’s slathered on like a thick BBQ sauce that puts things over the top. Just remember, no one said you had to feel good to have a good time at the movies.
2CFilm & Paradise Media
