I’ve always loved the character Hannibal Lecter but I’ve always felt his movies and tv shows have misused him. The only decent thing he’d been in was “Silence of the Lambs”. “Hannibal Rising” comes along and not only does it not feel remotely like a picture about Lecter but it’s also one of the worst sequels/prequels I’ve ever seen.

In “Hannibal Rising”, we see how Hannibal Lecter, who is played appallingly by Gaspard Ulliel, becomes a complete monster but there is nothing indicating how he became the suave and mentally seductive man seen in later films. What we get is a series of grotesque killings and a lack of sophistication.

I loved Anthony Hopkins in “Silence of the Lambs”, “Hannibal” and “Red Dragon”; I also enjoyed Brain Cox in “Manhunter” and that’s because these gave Lecter personality and made him seem intellectually superior. Gaspard Ulliel plays Lecter as a whiny brat with zero charisma and his stabs knives through men’s heads, decapitates people with samurai swords and removes their cheeks for digesting. Lecter’s been violent onscreen before but here he does it more like a torture picture than a thriller. The other characters aren’t remotely interesting and they lack any screen time for them to be interesting.

It’s brutal, it’s miserable and it’s boring. “Hannibal Rising” is badly made, badly acted and has is easily the worst film to feature its main character. I still remain hopeful that a seriously impressive film about the world’s most famous fictional cannibal is possible but at the moment all we’ve got is “Silence of the Lambs” and a handful of moments from some of the other ones. If you like watching people intentionally cut themselves then the bloodbath that is “Hannibal Rising” eagerly awaits your viewing, for anybody with the mental capacity of a normal human being then this is one you’ll want to steer clear of.