Unless I'm much mistaken, Meat Grinder has the honour of being the first Thai film I've covered in this series – certainly not a conscious decision, as I'm always researching and looking for movies to add to the list before even trying to find out where I can actually watch it. But let me say this – if they're all up to this level, it certainly won't be my last. However, this one comes with a public health warning, because this movie is absolutely as dark as f**k. And you should all know by now that's not a claim I make lightly.

Meat Grinder follows the story of Buss, a young woman under much financial duress, with a child at home and what appears to be a pretty unsuccessful noodle cart business that keeps her out of the house most of the day. It also goes into her absolutely nightmarish childhood – and some of these scenes were so uncomfortable to watch, not necessarily on the visual gore/torture level, but on the psychological level some of this stuff will not soon be forgotten. Unfortunately she hands down flashes of this treatment to her daughter, and Buss tends to ultimately calm herself by immersing herself in a water barrel to almost the point of drowning. But the nightmarishness doesn't stop there, oh no. Because after a crazy riot breaks out around her in town, she finds a body in the bottom section of her cart – and she's not one to waster perfectly good meat...

From there, her business flourishes, to a point where she converts her house into a bustling noodle bar, but sadly those she owes money to are not willing to let things lie. And that's without mentioning suspicion falling on her over the missing young man that made up her first batch of 'special noodles'...

It's honestly a pure coincidence that this one is a second cannibal movie of the month, but this one is very different to The Last Supper. That one was a tale of debauchery from a man in a position of privilege, while Meat Grinder is a traumatic story of abuse and pressure leading one woman to a single, horrifying decision. There are times you almost sympathise with Buss, despite her heinous crimes, because of everything that has gone on in her past – and that's good storytelling however you slice it.

As much as there was that I liked, I don't want to go totally overboard, because there were limitations – it did rather jump all over the place time-wise, leaving me confused here and there, and some of the side performances don't quite back up a great central turn by Mai Charoenpura as Buss. She's quiet and taciturn much of the time, but with this simmering sense of rage and injustice ready to explode at any time. The music was pretty jarring in many places, and sort of knocked the mood the film was presenting at times. There were a good number of surprises en route though, and if you like your cinema deeply grim and unpleasant – both emotionally and visually – this could be worth you digging out for a watch.

RATING: 8.5/10. I can't help but think that if this movie had been a bit more linear, and put a bit more time into just hanging together better, this could have been well towards top marks. As it is, this is a fine movie that offers a distinctly bleak look into a life all-but ruined by cruelty from both parents and spouse, with that darkness spiralling into the modern-day of its protagonist. Some of the performances from characters on the fringes do hold things back a bit, but I don't want to mark down too badly because the majority do a good to great job. Brace yourself though – while it is compelling, it is literally no fun at all and might even be one of those that actively puts a dent in your mood. I know next to nothing about Thai cinema, but based on this I might just have to explore its horror movies a little more deeply...

Two things to say before I start – I've always liked horror short films, and have tried throughout the five or so years of Film Gutter to bring the focus to them where I can. It's not always easy to find that many that are particular extreme, but I've always enjoyed watching them where they fit the bill. Ultimately it's never been a hardship for me to review something in the milieu.

Secondly, if I'm trawling my way through Amazon Prime and I see the name JACK KETCHUM on the front page of the movie, it's dollars to doughnuts that I'm going to click it. This short film is based on an equally short story by one of the most acclaimed horror writers of his generation, so had to be worth at least a look – especially bearing in mind this is the mind that brought us movies like The Woman and The Girl Next Door. So let's dive in, shall we?

Mail Order tells the story of Howard, who is quickly established as a sort of douchebag, one of those stock market wheeler-dealery types with more money than morality. Hats off for getting that across so quickly. Unfortunately he's even slimier than that, as with his work done he proceeds to open a package and play a snuff film he's ordered. But something there gives him pause – although honestly he probably should have paused long before the act of hitting play. Anyway, he recognises the women on the tape as ex-girlfriend Greta, with whom he had a pretty brief dalliance that ended when he tried to get a bit too aggressive in the bedroom. We see all this in flashback, and it's decently enough done structure-wise. But there's a final surprise to come, and Howard bumps into Greta in an alleyway – which he seems weirdly blasé about – but she's certainly not forgotten what he did to her...

Honestly I felt like I preferred the opening section of this film to the closing, which was a bit hard to fully grasp at the time, although I think you can make sense of given some time and thought about it. Still, the central premise is a decent one, and that's a word I'd use for about everything here – decent. There's a small cast and crew involved, and clearly things have been done on a budget – very common in this section of the industry. The acting performances are perfectly fine, and everything looks OK without really excelling in the camerawork or visual elements. You can tell it's a Ketchum from its overall bleak tone and some of its content, so if you like the author's work you might get that bit more out of it again. But ultimately this was a movie that did a solid enough job of everything, and was worth the quarter of an hour or so that I invested in it.

RATING: 6/10. Funnily enough IMDB seems to have landed on 6.2/10 (at the time of writing) and that feels pretty fair. Mail Order is not likely to rock your world, but it's perfectly watchable and entertaining for what it is out to achieve. It probably won't be your go to Ketchum adaptation – although it has some extremely stiff competition in that regard – but for afficionados it should be a good watch, and indeed it's worth checking out even if that's not the case. You can go and find it on Amazon Prime if you'd like to take a look for yourself – no need to mail off for it or anything...

As you can imagine, I spend a lot of time scrolling through streaming services seeking out movies to review, and when this one popped up on Amazon Prime I had an immediate sense of deja vu. It took a minute or two to figure out why, but this was a movie that I'd seen a couple of years prior at the Paracinema Film Festival here in my home town of Derby (and indeed my home venue of QUAD). I don't know quite why I didn't review it at the time – I'd packed in a lot of films over those few days, and it's possible I was just feeling a bit overloaded to review that much. But I figured this would give me a second chance to check this one and give it the spotlight I maybe should have previously.

Hippopotamus as a film is pretty small in scale, following kidnapper Tom and his captor, Ruby. She wakes up in a locked room, chained and completely discombobulated with both legs broken to negate any chance of escape. Tom tells her the same thing many, many times – you can only leave here once you've fallen in love with me. So far it's not a revelatory concept, although the performances are decent enough to carry this one in general, and the short runtime does help things along to some extent. Of course you then have to throw in the fact that she has forgotten everything due to retrograde amnesia – and you will just have to stretch to accept that old filmic device if you're going to get anything out of this one – and although it is pivotal to the plot here as a device it does always leave me feeling bit incredulous.

I felt like I really wanted to like this movie – while I have seen a lot of these 'kidnapper vs kidnapee' cat and mouse sort of films, if someone does have a fresh spin I can certainly be talked into enjoying something. This one is obviously low-budget, but not in a way that feels in your face – everything looks decent, while keeping the cast and effects to a minimum. But it does feel like even at 77 minutes the plot is a bit slight to carry its runtime, and as more and more is revealed it does feel as though things get harder to believe. The closing part of the scene are a long sort of flashback and as a conclusion feels really unsatisfactory, and dare I say illogical, jolting my suspension of disbelief many times. Hippopotamus is basically OK if a bit slow for an hour, and then really seems to fall apart in its last quarter of an hour. It does feel as though a potentially interesting concept does get a bit flushed away, which is a shame because I think this movie could have ranked higher if we could have taken it home that bit better. It's maybe angling to be something a little like Pet, which I slightly preferred, but doesn't land it quite as well.

RATING: 4.5/10. I feel like the rating for this one has gone down and down the more I've thought about it, although I didn't want to be too hard on it because there were certainly ideas and indeed performances here I liked. However I'm not quite so willing to forgive it for a clumsy, heavy-handed ending that really detracted from what had happened rather than adding to it. If you're particularly into movies with this kind of set-up, you might still get something from it, but there are better examples out there. I doubt this one will cramp your mood severely, but it's hard to see it living too long in the memory either – ironically, given what the movie is about. As I mentioned previously, you can watch this one free with your Amazon Prime subscription if you wanted to go and check it out for yourself. Overall this one comes out a little below average at 4.5/10.

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Before you ask, no, Film Gutter hasn't suddenly started to delve into religious movies – although this and many others might have had us saying 'Oh my god' here and there. In fact there's very little of any religious persuasion in The Last Supper, a fairly obscure Japanese offering following a plastic surgeon/cannibal who tells his story as a sort of confessional diary. If the idea of cannibalism makes you distinctly uneasy, now might be a good time to turn back from this particular review.

On the surface Dr Yuji Kotarida seems to have it all – highly revered and idolised in this field, about to be profiled by a significant TV channel and seemingly having women fall at his feet everywhere he goes. But this move doesn't mince words (if you'll forgive the phrasing), as we kick off with him brutally beheading a date with a massive cleaver. From there most of the story is in flashback, with the doctor tracking back to where it all began, with him cooking and eating fat removed by liposuction (it sounds gross and it is gross here, trust me). He then retells the growth of his obsession for human meat, and the many women he cooks and eats – from a suicide victim he found in a forest through to a woman he paid a large amount of money for the privilege (which went to her struggling family, it appears) to more recent victims he has knowingly and deliberately killed. In fact, it seems human meat is about all he eats. But when a woman close to him goes missing, he comes under ever closer scrutiny from the police and his gruesome, heinous crimes are at risk of being unveiled...

I can't move on without talking about the horrible dub on this – I'm stuffed if I could find any subtitles, which I would have far preferred. But apart from that there was a lot I liked here, and I've made a conscious version not to hold the English dub against this film here. Some of the delivery is so underwhelming and underplayed it sounds like either the voice actors new saw it in context, or they were doing this dub at the end of a super-long working day. Yet this was an interesting movie, with a sort of macabre humour running through it at times. It's one of those 'not for everyone' movies, but I found it held my attention strongly. Some of the plotline above might sound outlandish, but in its context it works and takes you on from relatively minor indiscretions to full-on atrocities committed by our charismatic lead. Many people who visit him talk about just how good the meat he prepares is, without knowing its hideous secret of course. It moves along at a good lick, and while the end is maybe a bit convoluted there are a couple of cracking moments there I am absolutely not going to spoil.

The gore actually isn't too over the top for what it is – in fact it's probably bookended at the start and end by the most gruesome scenes – and much of the middle is suggestion and intimation rather than being horribly in your face. I think that helps it not slip too far into absolute absurdity, and leaves it some impact by the time you come to the closing credits. It's over the top, but not too much so, and whipped along at a good pace with some interesting and original concepts.

RATING: 8.5/10. This one was certainly a pleasant surprise, given just how little I knew about it before watching it. It's pretty macabre and ghoulish, but does keep a strong pace and has some little flashes of very dark humour that I'm sure some of my hardened readers will enjoy. I can't really tell you any one element was particularly special, but every aspect of it – acting, pacing, visuals, sound, concept – ultimately ranged from good to excellent, so this one does rank pretty highly. I feel like it almost earned half a mark for its striking closing moments too – which I'm still not spoiling! A very strong 8.5/10 for this one.

BY ALEX DAVIS