Categories: FilmFilm Review

FNC 2017 review – KFC

Vietnam (and much of Southeast Asia) is littered with KFC restaurants. Colonel Sanders’ beaming face is nearly omnipresent in major Vietnamese cities, which makes it a fitting hook for a Vietnamese horror film, especially one as disorientingly crazy as KFC.

The film opens with two separate text warnings that this is not based on a truly story, seemingly to assure audiences that nothing this depraved has ever actually taken place. That sets the tone for a film that in its minuscule 68-minutes running time manages to cram in numerous scenes of necrophilia, torture, cannibalism, murder, and the thankfully unnamed act of feeding human flesh to a dog.

KFC washes over as a series of brutal scenes, often with no cohesive narrative structure tying them together. The main character drives around an ambulance looking to run people over so he can perform all sort of heinous acts on them following their death. There is also something about a brutal street gang, and the unsupervised children who spend their days in KFC, becoming obese on the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices.

So what does all this have to do with the actual KFC chain? Apart from a few scenes of characters eating there (which I can’t imagine the mega corporation would have ever approved) not too much. There is an argument to be made that the film is drawing a correlation between the insidious nature of American capitalism and fast food and its unpredictable effects on the Vietnamese culture and population, which would at least imbue the revolting scenes here with some point, apart from sheer shock value.

What’s more likely is that the ever-present fried chicken in the film is simply the banal backdrop against which a series of horrific incidents occur, seemingly without reason. We don’t see many horror films from Vietnam, so KFC at least works as a bit of a stomach-churning oddity, even though it never manages to make one iota of sense.

KFC screens Monday, October 9 and Tuesday, October 10 as part of the FNC film festival. For tickets and the complete schedule visit nouveaucinema.ca.

Gabriel Sigler

Share
Published by
Gabriel Sigler

Recent Posts

SXSW 2025 Review: Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

Hilarious and blissfully insane, Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is one of the…

1 week ago

SXSW 2025 Review: It Ends

Stuck on a terrifying road trip, four young adults try to escape their Lynchian nightmare…

1 week ago

SXSW 2025 Review: Clown in a Cornfield

Clown in a Cornfield is a thrilling horror-comedy hybrid from director Eli Craig (of Tucker…

2 weeks ago

SXSW 2025: 10 Films to Catch at This Year’s Festival

We highlight 10 movies to catch at this year's SXSW Film & TV Festival including…

3 weeks ago

Captain America: Brave New World Review: The MCU Needs a Shake-Up

If this is the best that the MCU can do after 35 films, it may…

1 month ago

Folk Alliance International Brings Hundreds of Musicians to Montreal This Week

The Folk Alliance International conference brings hundreds of folk-related acts to downtown Montreal this week,…

1 month ago