Hollywood, they say, will eat you alive, and stories of those who try to succeed (and fail) are often accompanied by metaphors of incorporation. If the city doesn’t eat you, the people will, or if they don’t, you’ll end up eating yourself. That’s what happens to Novella (Meggie Maddock) in this powerful movie about a struggling actress who just can’t get a break.

No wonder she develops some nervous habits. The one revealed here is auto-cannibalism. She eats herself.

Novella has lost control of her life. She hasn’t won a part for three years. Intending to be a famous movie star, she instead finds herself auditioning for porn movies to make ends meet, and then comes home to find an eviction notice on her door. Her life is out of control, and she tries to reclaim it by auto-cannibalism—eating her own flesh. An illness, an addiction or an obsession is often described as “all-consuming” and Eat takes this to its logical conclusion.

The film explores the desperation and isolation that is so much a part of modern cultures, and the extreme reactions to the feeling of failure. What better way to explore the darkness inside us than by opening ourselves up and looking, feeling and tasting it? As the movie reminds us,

This is the debut feature from Jimmy Weber (Incubator), and he demonstrates a rare talent for showing people things that really turn their stomachs. This is what horror should do—while so many entries that once caused people to pass out or vomit in cinemas have become stale and unremarkable, people eating their own flesh still manages to make the gorge rise for many otherwise hardened reviewers of gore movies. It takes us into our deepest fears and lets them out to play in the (relatively) safe world of the cinema.

Andy Warhol made an underground movie called Eat in 1964 which featured a man eating a mushroom for 45 minutes. This Eat is a lot more graphic, although the French got here first with Marina de Van’s extraordinary 2002 film In My Skin. In that film, the protagonist feels the same appetite for her own flesh as so many people seem to feel when they smell bacon.

If you’re not a gore hound, you probably may not like this film. The special effects are excruciatingly realistic, and reinforced by sound effects of biting and slurping that offer a sometimes exaggerated realism. But although it is a disturbing film, it is beautifully made and makes its point about the human tendency to consume, like the ouroboros, the very environment that sustains us.

Cannibalism, or any kind of carnivory, is ultimately about control. Humans seek to control nature by killing and eating others—usually other species, but sometimes, even often, other humans. There is no greater control of another than taking their life and converting their flesh into food and then into faeces. But doing it to ourselves? That is more an enquiry, an interrogation of the usually unquestioned human/animal binary. Reddit reports that a guy who calls himself Incrediblyshinyshart served his friends tacos, made from his own amputated leg, just to see what we taste like. A Spanish influencer ate part of her knee which had been removed surgically, just because it was her property and she could (much the same argument people use to justify eating other animals). Then there’s the vegan who made meringues out of his own blood, because, he said, it is,

“the only ethical source of animal products, because I can give my consent to myself in a way that a sheep can’t.”

Once we look inside our skin, that large sensory organ which identifies us to the world and ourselves, we find meat, the same red meat we find inside other mammals. The only difference between the cannibal who consumes his own flesh and the gourmand who eats that of a pig, cow or sheep is one of consent.