It is said that reality is often stranger than fiction. The superbly executed Grimm Love proves that axiom to be true. In this fascinating and haunting film, Felicity star Kerri Russell plays Katie Armstrong, an American student living and studying in Germany. A psychology major, Katie is writing her thesis on the case of Oliver Hartwin, who through an online ad found Simon Grombeck, whom he slaughtered and ate. Consumed by her fascination with the case, Armstrong sets down a lonely path of selfdestructive obsession as she tirelessly tries to unearth who these men were, where they came from and what ultimately led to their video-taped encounter and Hartwins 10-month long feast on his lover’s flesh. Based on the real life case of gay German cannibal Armin Meiwes, Grimm Love is a fascinating journey into the human psyche. The filmmaker painstakingly insures that the macabre subject matter is not exploited, shying away from gore and opting for a film that plays more like a thriller than a horror film, though the heinousness of the crime is always present and the necessary shown. Armstrong’s research of the case is alternated with flashbacks of the episodes, from adolescnce to adulthood, that may have set victim and killer alike on their cateful path to each other. Sometimes love will eat you alive.

-Kareem Tabsch