It remains a rare horror film to have won the Best Picture Oscar, and the figure of Hannibal the Cannibal continues to loom over the genre over 30 years later. A sequel was inevitable, and the one we got was odd, but it was nowhere near as strange as the book it was based on. The end result, which ended up being the second biggest selling novel of 1999 (beaten only by John Grisham), is genuinely bananas. He wants revenge on Lecter and works with a crooked Justice Department official, Paul Krendler, to make it happen. It would have made sense to aim for pulp, but Scott wants Hannibal to embody prestige, and the disconnect simply falls flat.