Human Roast Pork Buns didn't do cannibalism as well as it could have.

Given its title, my expectation for this movie was gruesome cannibalism. Yet I found that Texas Chainsaw Massacre did a much better job at depicting terrifying cannibalism, and I found those scenes to be way more vomit-inducing than in this film. Other scenes were disgusting for sure, I feel there was a missed opportunity when they favored scenes of police beatings and him trying to escape. There is a excellent build up to realizing that human meat is on the menu in TCM that doesn't exist in HRPB. The scene of the police officers eating is too well-lit, rather comedic, gross because of mouth close-ups and not because there is any emphasis of how vile it is they are eating flesh, and overall disappointing in its fear-factor.

You can skip this paragraph if you want, this is a summary of the most well executed cannibalism scene I know of:

In a single-player "Walking Dead" video game I played in 2012, there is a scene where all of the characters meet a new group of apocalypse survivors who live on a secure farm with plenty of food. It seems too good to be true and so the main character and character that the player controls, Lee, searches the farm over the next few days to see if the area is as safe as it seems. There's not much, an electric fence, a screwdriver which you can use as a weapon later, etc. Slowly, over the course of about an hour of real-time gameplay, Lee discovers a gruesome butchering area in the back of a barn. Obviously, it's acknowledged that it's for the cows and pigs, but ominous music is played and the camera lingers on the blood and it's unsettling to say the least. Then, the characters are called to dinner. It has slowly become cloudy and rainy throughout the time spent searching the farm, which is done in a really subtle way, I hardly noticed it. Lee walks into the farmhouse, and there is a stairway next to the entrance to the dining room. As Lee walks inside, his friend falls down the stairs and at Lee's feet. His legs are chopped off mid-thigh and he grabs Lee, saying "Don't eat the meat". An intense heartbeat track begins to play and Lee runs into the dining room as numerous people, including children, are beginning dinner. Then, you have to choose between a few lines of dialogue to warn the people, something like "Don't eat" or "It's human" or "AAAAA!". If you press the button fast enough, you save a few other characters from taking their first bites. Thunder finally cracks and the man with no legs appears in the doorway, dragging himself with his arms followed by a trail of blood. He says something and everyone turns to see him, in full view of the entire group in the dining room, with meat on their plates. As everyone sees him, people start crying, vomiting, and then there is an exceedingly creepy conversation where the farmers explain that they have been surviving by eating travellers who find their farm. They explain themselves in such a calm and straightforward way, unlike the deranged people of Texas Chainsaw Massacre or the villain in Human Roast Pork Buns. This chapter ends with either fighting and killing the farmers who fed your group human, or running away immediately. It's intense, blood-pumping, disgusting, and raining really hard during this climax. The slow build up of it all and personally finding unsettling clues and then suddenly having to alert people just after finding out yourself that they are being served one of their friends is such a well-done plotline of this game, and it was the perfect recipe for terror.

TL;DR:

The actual eating scene and the realization that they were eating human was so lackluster. Since they threw away any attempt at staying true to this story, I think fully diving into the strongest aspect of the sensationalization, the cannibalism, would have carried this movie in a way that the police officers constant beatings and banter really didn't. The violence carried out against the villain became more and more uninteresting with its increase. Not only do we become desensitized to its intensity, but it feels like the police officers are not really delivering a sense of justice that viewers like to see, but that they were just being violent for the sake of being violent. And for a confession, of course. Although, it is miraculous how awful the last scene is despite this. It turns out I was not desensitized at all because the slaughter of the family was still absolutely horrible to watch. I think there is less fear when it is the villain, the threat, being attacked. This sense of a threat is important, it would have been scarier to have the human roast pork buns served to the police officers in the restaurant rather than the safety of the police station. It also would have been scarier to watch him make their food with a sinister grin rather than just showing them open normal-looking pork buns. If you're going to go all-out, go all-out!!!

I understand why people have always been and still are afraid of more and more violence and sexual content being shown. I believe there is room to question what potential negative effects certain media can have on one's brain in various ways without desiring censorship of the subjects. I think we do draw the line in certain places and that is a good thing, obviously banning child pornography is a good thing. There is more of a grey area regarding other things, though. It's not difficult to find videos of people dying in bull fights, horrific animal abuse in industry-standard slaughterhouses (scarier than anything I've seen in a film), and car accidents. There can be valid uses for a variety of terrifying media, one of the uses being entertainment I think is where we most struggle because it seems to become less righteous in that case.

This image is from the Walking Dead comic in which that video game scene is based off of.