The Cook (2008)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

A new Hungarian cook (Mark Hengst) arrives in a sorority house while a group of girls travels during the weekend to Cabo. The cook does not speak any word in English and is befriended by the medical student Amy (Makinna Ridgway). While the girls stay in the house, he kills one of them, Michelle (Stefanie Solano), using her meat to prepare the most delicious dishes for the girls while he promises in Hungarian to kill everyone in the house.The low budget "The Cook" is an average comic slasher that has some goods and awful points. First there is no plot, only a new cook that arrives and kills the girls, without any development of his character or motives. The sorority house looks like a warehouse, and the behavior of the hot girls is more for sluts than for college student, with a group of potheads, lesbians and whores. The dialogs are among the most mediocre I have ever seen. When a person befriends another, the usual first question is how your name is. The nerd Amy befriends the cook and never asks his name. Mark Hengst is great, alternating sweet, humorous and scary faces depending on the situation. The joke with "Friday the13th: The Final Chapter" is probably the best moment of this movie. As a tradition in B-movies, most of the girls are extremely sexy and their partial nudity is very attractive and sometimes erotic. The gore special effects are reasonable for a low-budget movie. The predictable conclusion is funny and in the end this movie is watchable and not so bad. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): Not Available

In a sorority some girls go on a vacation while others stay behind. We will follow those who stay at the sorority house. They're an entertaining bunch: an innocent fanatic Christian girl who is the object of lust of an aggressive girl, a medical student who does nothing but study, a slutty girl, a trio of friends made up of a dumb blonde and two foul-mouthed lesbians who spend most of the time high, an exercise fanatic who has a guy over to tutor her, but she doesn't want anything else with him.Their new cook arrives, a Hungarian who can only say "OK" in English. He prepares them delicious meat dishes. But little by little the girls start disappearing. The cook doesn't appear as to them as a suspect because he's always covered in blood hacking meat. The pretty medical student sort of falls for the cook even though he tells her what he will to do her friends, in Hungarian, and she thinks it sounds sweet.The dialogue is pretty funny and the girls are given good and distinct personalities. There's some gore, and a bit is gruesome. There are a couple of twists near the ending. Overall an OK lower budget horror movie saved by the fun girls and also the cook does a good job as a mad serial killer.

The Cook is pretty much what I expected for a low-budget movie – entertaining but not spectacular. Its appeal would be primarily to high school and college males and females. Technically, it was far better than a lot of low-budgets that I've watched. But what detracted from this movie, in my opinion, was casting the girls as relatively unlikeable – either virtual whores or lesbians. How can we be sympathetic with these girls being killed?? The special effects were better than average for a movie of this type, but suspense was mostly lacking after the first girl was slaughtered, cooked, and served. The only suspense was which one would be next and which one(s) would be spared. Oh, and whether the girls would turn on the cook and kill him instead. (Maybe there was more suspense than I thought!) Loved the Lance character....excellent acting without any special dialog! The Cook was also well played but as a director I would have toned down his facial antics just a little. Worth buying - worth watching a 2nd time using slow-mo to watch the killings and the closeups of the kitchen preparations!

I found The Cook to be both enjoyable and boring at various moments through the film. Almost everything was inconsistent. One actor would deliver a memorable performance and the next...would leave something to be desired. Mark Hengst, as the cook, was the highlight of the entire film. He was both humorous and rather frightening at times. He played a cannibal cook pretty well, I thought. Some of the girls were attractive, with some nudity (I know that's one appeal to this film).The dialogue was mediocre...and with three screenwriters you figure they could come up with something better. Cinematography was one minute bland and uninspiring and the next fairly well done. The gore was decent...however, some of it looked particularly fake and amateur.The plot was almost non-existent, even for a slasher film. Essentially, the sorority house gets a new cook and he's, well, not very nice.I would avoid this unless you're particularly bored as you can find better violence, better gore, better nudity, better plot, etc. in many other slasher films. However, I do recognize that The Cook didn't have a large budget, and so the effort is admirable.Mark Hengst carries this film...with a less interesting cook this film would be dismal.