Gospel says:
I first watched this flick roughly a year ago, and I remember it was good enough to watch a second time. Having now watched it a second time, I'd like to retract that opinion. The movie is certainly worth watching once for the horror fanatic; that's about as far as it goes, sad to say.
My understanding of the background of the movie is that the creators won a contest and won funding from a number of stars, many of whom have connections to Kevin Smith. Hey, that explains Jason Mewes' involvement. Anyway, the funding they received bumped this up from being a B-grade film to being what I think is in the B+/A- territory. The casting doesn't say much for the budget, consisting mostly of no-names and Henry F-ing Rollins!, but the effects related to the creatures are pretty top notch. Another budget-saving device? Everything takes place in one bar. B-grade film with A-grade effects. Awesome.
There isn't much to say about the story except for the fact that the writers were clever in their subversions. The man labeled "Hero" dies within minutes of his introduction. Other heroes are offed without notice, and many die very quickly. Normally I would be a fan of such things. I love when things happen beyond my expectations. The problem is that it ceases to be that clever when you realize that the writers have helped to inform your expectations. Whenever a character is introduced, information is posted on the screen stating information about the characters and their life expectancies. While these are supposed to be taken with a grain of salt, the viewer still takes in the information simply by reading it.
I focus on this because Feast seems to be meant to strike on two levels: gore and subversion. I talked about the effects, and it works. The movie basks in its sudden, gory violence. OK, done. Then there's the subversion, which is lacking because of its informing the viewers. The only reason we care that "Hero" is killed so suddenly is because he's labeled "Hero". Might as well title the movie, "Everything We Tell You is Wrong". A movie like this would work better if it focused on the horror movie tropes, because those are cliches we have grown to expect anyway. That would be what I'd call "fair". With my stating using normal tropes would be "fair", that implies that I think the movie cheats. It does.
The only other real issue I have with the movie is the quick cutting used in the editing and sped up footage used during the scenes of carnage. It cheapens the action to some degree to get a cheap jump out of the audience. Again, when "Hero" was taken out, it didn't even happen in one cut. Nope, he goes through his speech, and then there's an edit to his already being halfway out of the window behind him. The audience jumps and says, "Oh shit! I didn't see that coming!" No, you couldn't have. There was no human way to have seen it. The movie isn't fair to its viewers.
Despite these criticisms, the movie is fun overall. It's simple in its aim and in its final effect. It wants to be a fun and violent movie. Cheesy graphics pop up to share information about each character mainly for the element of fun and establishing characters without having to spend much time on exposition. Then carnage happens. When looked at simply, it's great. Grab a bunch of friends, a few drinks and perhaps hors d'oeuvres, and have a fun time. Turn off your brain and go in. Tune in, turn on, drop out.
I first watched this flick roughly a year ago, and I remember it was good enough to watch a second time. Having now watched it a second time, I'd like to retract that opinion. The movie is certainly worth watching once for the horror fanatic; that's about as far as it goes, sad to say.
My understanding of the background of the movie is that the creators won a contest and won funding from a number of stars, many of whom have connections to Kevin Smith. Hey, that explains Jason Mewes' involvement. Anyway, the funding they received bumped this up from being a B-grade film to being what I think is in the B+/A- territory. The casting doesn't say much for the budget, consisting mostly of no-names and Henry F-ing Rollins!, but the effects related to the creatures are pretty top notch. Another budget-saving device? Everything takes place in one bar. B-grade film with A-grade effects. Awesome.
There isn't much to say about the story except for the fact that the writers were clever in their subversions. The man labeled "Hero" dies within minutes of his introduction. Other heroes are offed without notice, and many die very quickly. Normally I would be a fan of such things. I love when things happen beyond my expectations. The problem is that it ceases to be that clever when you realize that the writers have helped to inform your expectations. Whenever a character is introduced, information is posted on the screen stating information about the characters and their life expectancies. While these are supposed to be taken with a grain of salt, the viewer still takes in the information simply by reading it.
I focus on this because Feast seems to be meant to strike on two levels: gore and subversion. I talked about the effects, and it works. The movie basks in its sudden, gory violence. OK, done. Then there's the subversion, which is lacking because of its informing the viewers. The only reason we care that "Hero" is killed so suddenly is because he's labeled "Hero". Might as well title the movie, "Everything We Tell You is Wrong". A movie like this would work better if it focused on the horror movie tropes, because those are cliches we have grown to expect anyway. That would be what I'd call "fair". With my stating using normal tropes would be "fair", that implies that I think the movie cheats. It does.
The only other real issue I have with the movie is the quick cutting used in the editing and sped up footage used during the scenes of carnage. It cheapens the action to some degree to get a cheap jump out of the audience. Again, when "Hero" was taken out, it didn't even happen in one cut. Nope, he goes through his speech, and then there's an edit to his already being halfway out of the window behind him. The audience jumps and says, "Oh shit! I didn't see that coming!" No, you couldn't have. There was no human way to have seen it. The movie isn't fair to its viewers.
Despite these criticisms, the movie is fun overall. It's simple in its aim and in its final effect. It wants to be a fun and violent movie. Cheesy graphics pop up to share information about each character mainly for the element of fun and establishing characters without having to spend much time on exposition. Then carnage happens. When looked at simply, it's great. Grab a bunch of friends, a few drinks and perhaps hors d'oeuvres, and have a fun time. Turn off your brain and go in. Tune in, turn on, drop out.
As Gospel mentioned the story is fairly simple, people in a bar are trapped and attacked by monsters. The movie does us the favor of not spending huge amounts of time figuring out where the creatures came from, thus not taking away from the pace of the film. The pressing matter is how do the characters survive. This gets interesting when you consider that cast consists of The Rude guy no one really likes and his handi-capable brother, kind waitress with bubblegum personality, single mom waitress trying to make ends meet, old bartender, the prick that owns the bar, the delivery guy who happens to be a moron, a soldier back from the war, Jason Mewes from Kevin Smith fame, an old lady who drinks and more or less does nothing for her part in the film, a biker chick, and a second rate motivational speaker (HENRY F---ING ROLLINS). With characters like these it's easy to see how the movie uses general stereotype characters that don't have alot of depth but are interesting enough.
Another thing that I thought was great about the movie was the introductories. Each character when they are first shown receive a freeze frame with a small bio to include life expectancy. At first this upset me, I mean how the f--- are they going to just give me information like that at the beginning of the film?!? I mean what is the f---ing poi..... oh wow the hero just got killed..it said he was supposed to last.....SWEET! These bios end up giving just enough info about the characters and still allowing a sense of humor to slide into the movie at this point.
Watching through the movie the first time I was extremly happy with the film. It exceeded my expectations (granted they weren't very high, I've gotten burned on movies that were produced by famous people and horror directors before) and was very entertaining. But there were a few things that bugged me, and the more I watched the movie the more and more they moved from pet peaves to psychotic f---ing hatreds! The first Gospel touched on, the editing isn't smooth and takes alot away from the film. The perfect example is when the hero dies, and it's not so much so that the movie feels choppy, they just happened to take the fluidness out of alot of parts because of the quick cuts. Granted this helps to keep the monsters out of sight for most of the picture, which is something I love horror movies to do but in the end it just becomes a distraction. The second thing that got under my skin was the relativly quick deaths of a number of characters. It becomes clear that the point is the thin out the number or characters and get rid of the dead weight, but the problem is the way that people are killed off. When mewes gets his face ripped off (Mewes I'm with you man, if my face was ripped off I'd yell "What the F---" too and run into something) and when the soldier dies the watcher doesn't really care. It's done so fast that the viewer doesn't really have time to take in what just happened and really feel for the characters. The other problem I had with the movie was the ending was unclear. I mean it was so dark I was having trouble seeing what was going on. Granted it wasn't as bad as Silent Hill was, I mean holy sh-t, you can't even watch that movie unless there are no lights, the blinds are closed, and there's no moon or stars.
In the end I think that Feast is a good film to through on when your in the mood for light hearted horror. Who knows, one day it may gain the cult following that Evil Dead did, though I seriously doubt it. As far as B movies go it's a gem, as far as horror movies go it's tollerable. So turn the lights off, grab some snacks and friends, hell a couple drinks couldn't hurt, and just enjoy the movie for what it is: violence, campy acting (HENRY F---ING ROLLINS), lots of blood, and monster sex.
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