The 10 Best Cannibal Movies

If the most terrifying horror monsters are the ones that most reflect real-life terror, then cinematic cannibals might be the most terrifying monsters of all. Unlike vampires, werewolves, or ghosts, cannibals on film are fully flesh-and-blood humans — just with a taste for the flesh and blood of other humans. The garishness of the act makes cannibalism a perfect subject for shock horror, and the cannibal film fully came alive in the ’70s and ’80s via low-budget splatter triumphs like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Cannibal Holocaust,” which pitted their protagonists against horrific waves of flesh eaters.

In recent years, cannibalism has had a bit of a “moment” — on film, at least. As The New York Times pointed out in 2022, a wave of movies, TV shows, and books exploring cannibalism has emerged in popular culture, from “Yellowjackets” to “Bones and All” to “Fresh.” Many of these projects use the practice as a way to symbolize social disruption, as an act so distant from modern social values that it feels alien. The hunger that a cannibal feels onscreen can stand in for sexual desire, for puberty, for insanity, or for a desire to regress from the restrictions of modern life into a new, animalistic way of life. But in the best cannibalism movies, what drives the man-eaters into consuming flesh is as mysterious to them as it is to the audience. Read on for the 10 best cannibal films of all time.