A killer physique. A physique killer…

Few genres can boast the instant familiarity and immediate gratification of the Slasher Film: flat-as-cardboard characters, depthless locales where phones and car engines never function at pivotal moments, masked killers with impossibly convoluted modus operandi and the ability to be in multiple places at once.

It’s a world that thrives on its predictability. Rarely is the formula turned on its head and even less frequently is it even asked to.

The latest variation: hot, ripped bodybuilders in mortal peril.

It’s the inspired premise for Sceamkings.com’s Beef: You Are What You Eat.

The independent studio — known for its focus on young men as predators and prey — dispenses with standard-issue sorority girls and cheerleaders who utter lines like “A job at a summer camp plagued by a history of murders where no one can possibly hear me scream? Where do I sign up?!” and “We’ll never get our comeuppance for that prank we played on that emotionally fragile freshmen!”.

Here the victims are statuesque musclemen short of clothes and on the make for their big breaks. Gone are the slumber parties, prom nights and dorms that drip blood in favor of the amateur bodybuilder arena and aspiring fitness model meatrack.

Even the movie’s resident maniac is neither a masked boogeyman nor a spindly twerp, but a collegiately-handsome (if non-anabolically enhanced) head case hacking his way through an assortment of doomed hard bodies, his identity unconcealed by Whodunit? red herrings.

That scantily-clad male models and a murder motivation that centers around frustrated bodybuilding dreams play integral roles in the plot are enough to propel this low-budget wonder into the narrow Queer Horror niche.

Add to the mix that four of the movie’s stars were cast directly from the stables of
northamericanbodies.com — most notably 19-year-old Adam Reich (left), featured in Blue Blake’s aptly-titled The Muscle Pit — and have graced the competitive bodybuilding world, fitness magazines,
Playgirl, muscle worship videos, the club circuit, and gay porn and it’s safe to assume
there’s a built-in audience here that won’t lament the lack of traditional co-eds fleeing
haplessly through the woods and twisting their ankles.

It’s the motive for the slayings that’s the most novel and, ahem, cutting in terms of gay culture’s preoccupation with unattainable, synthetic physiques. The inherent cheesiness of the bodybuilding culture is lampooned, but it’s the modern man’s buckling under the weight of a 21st Century standard of pulchritude that plays best.

Longing to be in front of the camera rather than behind, our murderous shutterbug Drew (finely played by Matt Weight — right) is driven by a combination of narcissism, pathological envy, debilitating body dismorphia, and an implicit Gay Rage. Like a boy who destroys his action figures when he realizes that they’re a plastic ideal he can never become, he decimates perfect symmetry he can’t hope to achieve.

While there are a few token women on hand to buffer the homoeroticism, it’s the erotic hostility between the men that takes center stage. As Drew progresses to dismemberment and ultimately cannibalism (as augured by
the title), what would normally be B-movie Ed Gein territory diverges into the ancient tribal
practice of imbibing adversaries to gain their vigor and power.

The relentless pursuit of physical perfection is the maddest of ends. As the Midgard Serpent envelopes the world and devours its own tail, so does cruel, indifferent Beauty consume Beholder and Beheld alike in a single gulp.