Human Hibachi is an often-stomach-churning take on the found footage horror form, which features subtle traces of dark comedy. The film concerns the birthday celebrations of a thirty-something woman, which turn decidedly gory ‘n’ gut munching bound. Here from Invincible Entertainment is a region one DVD of the film, which is a barebones affair.

Human Hibachi appeared in the year 2020 it was directed by Audubon, New Jersey-born Mario Cerrito. In all he has four feature-length credits to his name- these go from the gambler in trouble thriller Deadly Gamble (2015), blackmailing horror thriller The Listing (2017), and a sequel to the film to hand Human Hibachi 2 (2022).

The film opens with a few confused flashback and forths, but don’t worry these make sense at the end of the film. When we get into the film proper we see a police officer sitting in an interview room with a woman- in front of them is a laptop, and we find out that her relative has met a horrible end- and she’s just about to watch the footage that has been edited together into a ‘film’ by the killers. So the footage/ film is played- and we meet Katie (Elizabeth Gaynor) an in her mid-thirties brunette, and her younger twenty-something Asian boyfriend Reo (Sopheaktra Theng). It’s Katie birthday- so Reo is filming her whole day, going from a cheeky nude shower shot, moving on to a dinner breakfast, lunchtime drinks with friends, and buying her a new dress for dinner- at the Japanese restaurant, where Reo works.

The first half of the film takes in the charting of the birthday celebrations- and Gaynor is likeable/ believable as the birthday girl Katie, Theng from behind the camera and in front is a little flat- but passable enough. Then we move towards the special meal- where they meet up with the two friends they met for drinks- each of the party is photographed. The night moves on, and they have a pleasant enough meal- with Katie getting rather drunk.

As the restaurant clears out, things finally switch- one of the other couple, a gym-focused man being taken down to the basement, tied & cut. As things unfold, we get footage of the dinners tired down & panicking, then we switch to lots of very gruelling guts and organ chopping. We find out that the restaurant’s owner Jin (Wataru Nishida) is selling the snuff footage to the east, but he’s also making more money on cooking/ selling the human meat and body parts to those paying for an after-hours experience. And this is when we meet a group of boorish and gluttonous salesmen and their greying middle age boss.

When you look at the DVD’s cover/ artwork- you’d be expecting proto-snuff horror/ torture porn- and while we get fleeting moments of this. The main focus here is the chopping up, preparation and cooking of the meant-to-be human meats and body parts. I’m a (non-human) meat eater myself, but don’t really like the actual preparation of organs/ meat cuts- so that with the film's tone rather had me feeling very queasy. The three salesmen & their boss, sell well enough the whole eating/ enjoying humankind- with spurting shots of blood and urine. We do have a few placing issues in the last quarter or so, but hang in there as we get some neat enough twists in the plot.

All in all, Human Hibachi was a different and interesting take on the found footage horror film- you just need to have a fairly strong stomach. I’ll certainly like to check out the film's sequel, which I believe is set in the woods and centres on a cannibalistic family.