Fantastic Fest 2025: ‘Meat Kills’ is deadly fun

Out of Fantastic Fest 2025, Martijn Smits’ Meat Kills brings the horrors of the meat industry front and center. Equal parts slasher and home invasion, the film (written by Paul de Vrijer) emerges as a surefire crowd pleaser with gnarly, Saw-like blood, guts, and gore. With the subtlety of a two-ton anvil, the creative team presents both sides of the argument that human beings shouldn’t eat meat. But the confrontational thematic material is best served with a pipe to the knees. A grimy feel to the production bathes the camera and further highlights the grotesque nature of the story.

Mirthe (Caro Derkx) works the floor at a pig slaughtering plant, and she’s seen some nasty things. But it’s for a good reason: she’s hoping to capture video footage of the horrific conditions and expose the company for inhumane treatment. When two of her coworkers usher pigs out of their stall, Mirthe films the brutality. Later, she uses the footage as a way to join a group of animal rights activists, known as the Animal Army, and helps plan a nighttime mission to the plant. Along with Nasha (Emma Josten) and several other members, they sneak onto the property to free the pigs and leave some graffiti behind.

Things quickly go south, though, when they discover that all the pigs have already been killed. Nasha turns her attention to revenge and leads the group inside the farmhouse, where they take the farmer’s children hostage and torture them. By Nasha’s estimation, they’re all murderers or at least complicit in the family business. When the farmer (Bart Oomen) returns, chaos erupts into a deadly game of cat and mouse. The activists must do the unimaginable if they want to survive, and Mirthe learns hard truths about death and vengeance.

Meat Kills is not what you might expect. What begins as something you may describe as propaganda quickly mutates into something much more universal. When the film takes a hard left turn, it becomes an absolute blood bath on par with an Evil Dead movie (there’s a shot in the third act that mirrors the iconic franchise). In working with cinematographer Rogier Jaarsma, Smits delivers gooey visuals that’ll make you scream with glee. The carnage is relentless once it starts and doesn’t let up until the very last shot.

With the festival coming to a close, it’s safe to say Meat Kills is one of the festival’s biggest surprises. While you might find yourself struggling to pick a side to root for, you’ll have a blast anyway. Writer Paul de Vrijer and director Martijn Smits knock it out of the park with a film so gloriously bloody that’ll satiate even the worst bloodlust.