"The Cook" review

The Cook (2008)

Mark Hengst... The Cook
Makinna Ridgway... Amy
Kit Paquin... Bunny
Penny Drake... Anastasia
Nina Fehren... Brooke
Noelle Kenney... Autumn
Brooke Lenzi... Kristen
Justine Marino... Pam
Stefanie Solano... Michelle
Allen Yates... Lance

A new cook shows up to help the horny sorority girls make it through their weekend. He speaks no English because he's from Hungary. Get it? Hungary cook? HAHAHA! He decides the most nutritious meal for growing young women is bits and pieces of other sorority girls. This cook can turn a sloppy joe into a delectable cannibal feast. Why he's doing all of this is unknown. He's just the cook and that's what cooks with big knives do in horror movies. The girls obliviously go on with their insipid lives while the cook keeps hoping that someone turns up who might actually be scared of him.

Horror comedies can be tricky movies to pull off. It's especially tough when the movie you end up making is neither a horror movie nor a comedy. One of the first rules in comedy is to never laugh at your own joke. It makes the movie that much more irritating when you see characters laughing about something completely inane. The Hungary cook? Yeesh. They actually have the nerve to use that line twice. If someone would have smacked the character for even thinking that's funny, then I would have laughed. As it is, I started to lose interest in "The Cook" the minute the line was uttered. I knew the movie was going downhill fast.

Much like Tarantino's "Death Proof", (I hate comparing this movie to a Tarantino flick but it was the first thing that popped in my mind), the writers have no idea how to write for women. This must have been their fantasy on how sorority girls act with no men around.They curse and dream about sex and pretty much act exactly like guys would if they were sex starved lecherous drunks. They were a fairly annoying group to listen to but I can't totally fault the ladies as their strings were being pulled by their horny puppet-masters.

The only thing that saved "The Cook" from a 1 rating was the tall, red haired Amazon girl from "Zombie Strippers", (Penny Drake). Drake has her eye on the shy religious girl and proceeds to seduce her. This leads to the only two enjoyable scenes in the movie. The first one has Penny kissing the girl in the hall. The second scene has them starting on their tender love affair with some S&M sex. If the filmmakers had let them finish this scene, the movie would have been far better for it. Instead Penny had to go to the kitchen where the homicidal cook was and you can guess what happened next.

There's a couple of gory parts, (heads, hands hacked off), but none of the scenes could be described as payoff scenes. The only payoff scene is when the movie ends. "The Cook" plays out exactly as you think it would. Cook kills girl, girls eat girl, repeat ad nauseum. "The Cook" was not sleazy enough for me to get over all of the horrible writing on display. I mean, maybe if a lesbian orgy had broken out and the cook charged in with a meat cleaver we would have had something.

You know, that's what women really do when they're alone. That's right. As soon as the men leave, they get naked in a pile on the floor. I'm sure of it. No doubt in my mind at all. I'm surprised the writers of "The Cook" didn't know about the no men=orgy rule. I thought they were going for stark realism in their portrayal of college women. But there might be some hope yet. "Cook 2" anyone? Anyone?

SCORE: 2 out of 4 crazy cooks