Anthropophagus II is presumably some kind of sequel to the 1980 Italian gore fest Anthropophagus: The Grim Reaper, one of many names that the first entry goes by. In this installment, a group of women enter a World War 2 bunker to research for their theses. The first night, two of the women go missing, which prompts the rest of the group to search for them. They soon find out they aren’t alone, and that a sadistic killer is hunting them down. 

The premise, at least on paper, seems like one that could be compelling. In execution, it quickly becomes a misogynistic, pointless exercise in torture porn. The women that pack into the bunker to research their “theses” aren’t given any depth or characterization. For all intents and purposes, they are simply cows being led to the slaughter. We don’t learn much about any of the women, and when they do talk to each other, they are insulting and belittling. They are all largely unlikable, which makes it difficult to latch on to any of them. The story dispenses with any kind of nuance and moves quickly to the women getting their clothes ripped off, disemboweled, and blood splashed across the walls. Without stakes or a character to get behind, it gets repetitive and boring quickly.

Any sort of detail or attempt to humanize the characters is quickly tossed aside. We don’t know what kind of class the women are taking. We don’t know what the theses they are writing are actually about, simply that they need to be in this bunker to do research. The plot is built on this flimsy foundation causing everything to quickly come crashing down. While the point of the movie may not be to get too deep into the backgrounds and motivations of the group, it would have gone a long way to have some kind of information about who they are and what they are doing there. It would have at least given the illusion that some thought went into the writing. 

There is some Argento influence here, but Anthropophagus II lacks any of the suspense, atmosphere, nightmare imagery, or clever kills that Argento was able to conjure up. Instead, director Dario Germani and writer Lorenzo De Luca take the worst elements of 70’s Italian horror and stretch it out over an hour and twenty minutes. The killer isn’t particularly scary or interesting, just purely driven by his need to slaughter women and eat them as quickly as possible. 

If there’s one thing to be celebrated here, the practical gore effects are spot on. The slicing, impaling, and intestines look great. It would appear more time and effort went in to making the gore look as great as possible, and it shows on the screen. The effects team should be lauded for their efforts. 

For the gore hounds of the world, Anthropophagus II may be a fun, nasty little treat. For everyone else, it indulges in the worst aspects of the torture porn genre without any kind of narrative drive. Watching irritating characters get chopped up by a boring killer gets old very quickly. Any kind of effort to flesh the women or even make the killer more menacing certainly would have gone a long way.

2 out of 10