Remember Godzilla? There was the original Japanese version, with no white people in it, and then there was the version released for American audiences with Raymond “Perry Mason” Burr. Burr played a television reporter sending dispatches back to the states about this big monster stomping on the Japanese.

Grimm Love, which gets its second SIFF screening today at 4 PM, is kind of like Godzilla—only you’ve got your German cannibal in place of your giant lizard and your Kerri “Felicity” Russell in place of your Raymond “Ironsides” Burr. Inspired by the true story of a German cannibal and a man he met on the Internet who consented to be killed and eaten, Grimm Love uses Russell—playing an American grad student studying in Germany—the same way Godzilla used Burr. That is, as a clumsy and unnecessary framing device.

Looking cadaverous and goth, Russell swans around a dimly lit German moonscape, eventually breaking into the house where the murder went down… where she falls down some steps into the creepy, dank basement where the murder took place… and takes some pictures. She eventually manages to get her hands on a videotape of the fateful night by, no shit, posting a note up on a website. A helpful, anonymous cannibal quickly delivers the video to Russell’s apartment on an appropriately dark and stormy night. She settles in to watch… the cannibal cooks his victim’s penis… which he then shared with his victim… who complains that his own penis is tough…

“I wanted it to be perfect,” says the German cannibal’s victim/date, before he sets his head down on his plate. Then the cannibal stabs his victim to death. Russell cries.

The end.

At the screening I attended someone from SIFF instructed us to view the film as if it were a modern Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale. This is something the audience was assumed to be too stupid, I guess, to deduce from the title alone.

Grimm Love is… well, it’s no modern Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale. It’s a crude, pretentious, stupid, and offensive slasher flick with just one slash. It’s Hostel or Tourista or Saw XVIII for pretentious homosexual film aficionados. Definitely to be missed.

SPOILER ALERT: The man that wanted to eat human flesh? It was his mother’s fault. The man that wanted his flesh to be eaten? It was his mother’s fault. The girl that just had to see the snuff video? Kerri Russell’s agent’s fault.