MEAT KILLS (Vleesdag)
Genre: Horror
Directed by: Pieter Van den Berg
Starring: Eva Heijne, Bram Veldhuizen, Noor de Vries
Platform: TBA
Rating: 2.5/5
By Stephen Lackey
I caught MEAT KILLS as part of the 2025 Fantastic Fest lineup, and it’s exactly the kind of movie that makes you question what you’re eating afterward, though not necessarily what you’re watching. The Dutch shocker, also known as Vleesdag, opens on a group of meat industry workers preparing for the annual “Meat Day” festival in their rural town. It’s a celebration of tradition, excess, and, well, blood. When a mysterious protest group sabotages the event, the tables turn, and the butchers find themselves being hunted and harvested instead.
At its core, MEAT KILLS wants to be a grisly morality tale about humanity’s indifference to animal suffering. It’s a noble idea, but Pieter Van den Berg’s approach is about as subtle as a sledgehammer to a cow’s skull. The film has plenty to say about cruelty and complicity, but it just never finds a way to say it with nuance. Every visual and line of dialogue hammers the point that meat is murder, and by the halfway mark, the message has been tenderized beyond recognition.
What works is Van den Berg’s clear affection for classic horror. The DNA of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is everywhere: the buzzing industrial soundscape, the claustrophobia, and the grimy texture that makes you feel like you need a shower after watching. The practical gore effects are impressively old-school, full of creative splatter and meaty dismemberment that would make Tom Savini proud. You can tell the effects team had a blast, and that enthusiasm does rub off a little.
The problem is that while the kills are plentiful, they’re emotionally hollow. None of the characters register as human beings worth caring about. Everyone is either vile, annoying, or bland, which makes it difficult to feel anything when the bloodlettings start. A horror film can be mean-spirited and still work if we’re invested in who’s suffering, but MEAT KILLS never gives us that entry point. There’s one character I believe we are supposed to care about, but even she doesn’t come off well enough to garner any emotional connectivity. The violence just becomes noise, and eventually, even the most outrageous gore starts to lose its flavor.
Still, there’s a strange energy to the film that keeps it watchable. Van den Berg has style, and his commitment to making the experience as raw and visceral as possible is commendable. It’s just a shame that the script doesn’t give him much to build on. The final act piles on the carnage without deepening the ideas or characters, leaving the audience as numb as the meat on screen.
MEAT KILLS isn’t bad, just frustratingly average. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a supermarket steak: satisfying in the moment, forgettable an hour later. As a Halloween watch with friends, it’ll get a few winces and maybe a laugh, but it’s not destined for cult status. In a festival lineup full of bold flavors, this one’s just a little too overcooked.
