It’s been a hot minute since my interview with director Roger Conners talking about his feature film Meat. Armed with three thousand metallic spikes and a burning desire for revenge, the instantly iconic design of its killer stood out as the horror villain I was most excited to see in 2023. Unfortunately, like most horror projects I get excited for, it got caught in traffic. But after two years of waiting for Meat to escape crowdfunding and post-production purgatory, The Stud has finally arrived.
A Story of Revenge and Redemption
After four long years of wrongful imprisonment, Noah (Cody Steele) is back. Taking the fall for his friends and being charged with the manslaughter of a young gay man named Paul, he returns to his hometown in hopes of rebuilding his life. Vilified by the media and locals, it’s a slow climb back to normalcy that at points feels impossible.
But when Noah is reunited with those so-called friends, the predatory it-boy Dante (Anthony Covatta) and his gang of lackeys, it’s not long before things go sideways. A masked serial killer has come knocking to collect on the people that actually killed Paul. Coated in silver and black leather, The Stud is out for blood, and no one is safe.
Meat: Exploring Queer Culture in Horror
One of the strongest aspects of Meat is the approach it takes to depicting a cultural space, the queer club scene, that is often sanded down for consumption. In almost every piece of media they’re depicted in, they’re sanitized to the point of being unrecognizably squeaky clean or maligned as one-dimensional hell holes. Meat instead takes a look at the people in these spaces, good, bad, and ugly, and examines them for a good long while before the film runs headfirst into the sleazy slasher territory its second and third acts inhabit.
Addressing Abuse in Safe Spaces
Meat is a film that confronts a harsh reality: in places where people are supposed to feel free to be themselves, and where a lot of queer people go to begin their journey of expression and self-understanding, there are inevitably going to be people who want to take advantage of that. Meat offers a measure of catharsis for those who have had to witness awful people infest their third spaces, with The Stud annihilating those who try to steal that space away from others.
An Uncompromising Story With an Uncompromising Vision
Meat is, as to be expected from most pieces of queer media, an uncompromising slasher.
Roger Conners’ vision here is the kind of counterculture cattle prod that will ruffle feathers. Especially among the people who can’t tolerate that it’s unabashedly a film made by, with, and for a queer audience.
It’s clear down to every shot, scene, and editing choice that Conners has gone all in on crafting the film from frame to frame. Sometimes that presentation rubs up against my personal preferences, with editing choices, and some minor visual kinks being my main gripes. I bring these up not to nitpick at the film, but to emphasize that the blemishes that would usually bother me much more with the indie horror films I watch are peripheral problems here.
Themes of Anger, Love, and Catharsis
It’s what Meat is trying to say that interests me more. Meat is designed to buck up against most sensibilities to tell a raw story with some especially difficult subject matter. It’s a story about abuse, the kind that happens on a community scale. It’s about anger first and love second; it speaks on indignation and affection for people coexisting inside of someone, and the conflicting feelings that arise from traumatic situations. In that department, Meat tells an excellent story centered around its main character Noah.
Steele’s performance as the burnt offering that saved the friend group is teeming with a good amount of believable resentment. I like how angsty his character becomes, and how he conveys that experience, as it really fits the film’s themes well.
Grimy, Gory, and Hard Not to Have Fun With
As Conners himself said, this is a film about mean gays doing shitty things and getting their deserved comeuppance. And that comeuppance can only come in the form of some very brutal kills. In how the film concocts its deaths, Meat’s recipe is simple: The Stud is channeling part Ghostface, part The Prowler, and just a dash of Frank from Maniac. He’s mean, lean, and no nonsense. He’s here to get the job done.
The practical effects here as The Stud cuts down his targets is the most obvious highlight, with some genuinely surprising prosthetics and makeup coming from a production this small. The first kill in the film especially sets the tone right, letting you know that no punches will be pulled. It’s not on Terrifier levels of grotesquery, but it’s enough to make you wince.
A Cast That Shines With Charismatic Villains
Despite the majority of the characters in this movie being awful people, the cast is very charming, in a way that made me conflicted; I’m supposed to hate these characters, and the film is clear about that, but some of the actors are too fun on screen to dislike and cause some mental dissonance. A standout performance comes from Matt Kane, playing the meathead himbo Vinny, truly inhabiting the role perfectly. There is also a near perfect death scene in the film, that I won’t spoil, which results from the culmination of a very camp chase sequence that feels ripped straight from the dailies of an 80’s Corman horror film.
While some of the cinematography is rough around the edges, the amount of genuine enthusiasm you feel throughout it and the topics that Meat tackles make it one of the most unique horror films you’re going to watch all year. And if the story doesn’t interest you and you’re really just here for carnage, you’re at the very least bound to have fun with the more traditional slasher fare it offers. Meat is a movie that’s been cooking low and slow for a while, and I feel I can confidently say the wait was worth it. Don’t count this one out just because it took some time getting here.