Hannibal

This wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. It may embolden me to try Silence of the Lambs, which heretofore I've been to chicken to watch.

On the other hand, I may be getting a false sense of security, because Silence of the Lambs is universally lauded, while Hannibal is more or less reviled. And I can understand why, when you consider how boring it is. The only gripping part is the end, when Hannibal Lector makes Ray Liotta eat his own brain. I'm not even going to count the Mason Verger death scene as remotely scary, because if anything, it's just comedy. Basically, what Verger (one of Lector's old, half-eaten victims) does in planning his revenge is he trains a bunch of hogs to attack and eat people. Hm, what does that sound like? How about South Park, when Eric tries to get a pony to bite off Scott Tenorman's weener in revenge. Or Austin Powers, when Dr. Evil tries to get sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. What do they have in common? They're both COMEDIES.

So when the hogs started doing their killing, with all these close-up shots of their bloody snouts, I thought, you must be joking.