Roger Conners’ Meat emerges as an essential queer horror film. The story, co-written with R. Zachary Shildwachter, explores queer violence, shame, accountability, scapegoating, and delicious retribution. In the queer club space, exploitation and power dance with expressive freedom and the hunger for basic human desires. Meat sits comfortably next to such offerings as Death Drop Gorgeous and Slay (2026), a triple-feature sucker punch of revenge and the terrible call coming from inside the house. S&M and kink also play an integral part to the downward spiral, leading to well-deserved bloodshed, chaos, and the suffocation that comes with queer dynamics.
Noah (Cody Steele) enjoys a bit of subservience, a seductive, flesh-twisting tango with domination. The local queer club serves as the playground of the sexy and the nasty. With his fellow queers, he’s experienced many nights of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. It’s intoxicating, freeing even. When a group of gays set their sights on fresh meat, their carnal tastes lead to a night of sweaty revelry—devolving into drugging, gang-rape, and murder. It’s an eerily, tragically timely story, as Jane Doe faces off against Cornell University and her rapists. For Noah, heavy consequences await when dawn breaks, with his co-conspirators abandoning him with a dead body.
Noah becomes the scape-goat and lands in prison. When he’s released, the other gays have continued their insidious dalliances without facing any repercussions. But someone knows better. Someone dressed as an S&M daddy is out for blood. Wearing a leather bodysuit and a mask of spikes, the unknown killer tracks down everyone involved in that fateful night and serves up scrumptious karma. Conners and Shildwachter offer up a cutting slice of revenge that speaks to the toxicity that can often manifest in the queer club circuit. And Meat also captures atonement for one’s crimes and presents two questions: When does rightful vengeance actually result in senseless violence? And when does an unintentional monster become a victim?
Conners toys with these inquiries with sharpness, but he allows the answers to land in murky territory and up for the audience’s interpretation. With cinematographer Mick Kunz in tow, the writer/director delivers electric visual style and flair that underscores the innate campiness of the performances. It’s a meaty, salty treat that seeks to destroy the senses, a heart-pounding foray into elaborate setpieces and a deep understanding of the motor mechanics of burgeoning queerness, relationships, and boundaries. Noah and his crew cross a very hard line, and the resulting bloodbath is both earned and destructive.
Roger Conners feeds the audience through a meat grinder of retaliation and consequences. Meat doesn’t mince its thesis, culminating in shocking kills and an alternate reality that we don’t experience all too often. When all is said and done, the film is a damn fun piece of queer entertainment that adds to the growing, long-overdue list of impressive queer horror.
