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Feast
What
is it these days with big movie studios making pictures
and then unceremoniously dumping them out with the trash,
so to speak, when they can’t quite figure out how
to market them?
First
it was 20th Century Fox and its bumbling of the Mike Judge
film, Idiocracy, which was dumped into seven cities
and left to die. Now, it’s the Weinsteins' and Dimension
Films' low end release of the third installment of the Project
Greenlight fare, Feast.
Directed
by the lovable John Gulager, Feast was Greenlight’s
last winner, and was being touted as the “best”
indie film to come out of Greenlight, not to mention the
show’s most watchable season. So why, with all the
decent buzz, would a studio only give this little scrapper
of a movie, a limited release, that amounted to a few weeks
and midnight only showings? Can I call it Idiocracy? Wait…
that’s another movie. But after watching the film,
it was apparent that it was a few biscuits short of a real
meal.
For
those of you who don’t know, Project Greenlight was
the reality show started by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon,
to promote and sustain the art of independent film. What
they got was reality TV gold, when amateur filmmakers went
awry, and their films went direct to video. It was a work
in progress but it was soon on its way to an early grave.
Enter season three. The Greenlight producers switched up
the format a little bit and changed the game.
Instead
of having the contest center around a winning screenwriter
who would then direct their opus, season three had two different
competitions: one for screenwriting, and one for directing.
Also, they changed the theme as well. The were looking to
make a horror movie. The script that won, was a little ditty
named Feast, written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick
Melton and the director they chose was a chubby, humble,
nerdy guy named John Gulager.
Gulager
won the contest for his visual and directing style, and
a lot of that is apparent in Feast. On Greenlight,
much ado was made about his inability to direct and his
blind loyalty to his family and friends.
What’s
surprising about finally sitting down to watch the much
delayed finished project is that Feast is mostly
lacking in its script. Now, some could argue that not much
script is needed in your typical, splatter fest, horror
flick, but in an almost classic movie like this, it’s
that little bit of something missing that could have made
this an instant cult favorite.
Feast
is a horror flick about a bar/truck stop out in the middle
of nowhere. The patrons, an assorted bunch of losers passing
the night away, come face to face with a pack of flesh hungry“monsters”
who’d like to have them for dinner. And no, I’m
not talking about them coming over for meatloaf. The rest
of the film is a riotous, action packed, fight for survival
with every character up for grabs with nary an apology in
sight.
The
set up is your typical, motley crew of trauma survivors
who are somehow trapped in a location and must band together
to stay alive and/or stop the creature/threat. However,
where Feast excels is in its self awareness. It
realizes that this scenario has been done to death and is
now instead being played out for fun.
Even
the character names are obvious nods to the primitive narrative
of films like these. The slacker/loser character is named
Bozo (Balthazar Getty), The doormat waitress who puts up
with life is called Tuffy (Krista Allen), The strapping
young lad who comes to save the day is called Hero, and
so on… And we learn all this by cleverly placed title
cards that briefly stop the action and tell us the character
names, occupations, and survival chances.
In the
same vein as the Evil Dead movies, Feast
finds the dark, black humor that only a sick and twisted
mind can find in one of these fake blood drenched scream
flicks. Whether it be the consistent whining of the beer
guy aptly named Beer Guy (Judah Friedlander) or the inspirationally
ignored wisdom of Coach, played hilariously smarmy by punk
rock legend Henry Rollins, Feast keeps the laughs
coming by playing up the stereotypes of these types of movies.
Where
the film fails is by stopping at its tongue in cheek approach
to these films and resting on its own charm. There are many
moments where the story feels like it’s going to be
pulled in a certain direction that just might develop a
more interesting angle that wasn’t expected, a real
surprise, and then it just doesn’t. Much is implied
about most of the characters’ pasts, but none are
truly explored. I understand that that was probably the
point, but after getting into the premise and really settling
into this movie, it felt like it could have been a better
movie than it was trying to be, instead of just being a
mockery of the already ridiculous horror movie genre.
The
movie is fun to watch, and a treat for fans of the horror/comedy
genre. I found the monster itself to be quite menacing and
impressive, and the overall gore satisfyingly good. All
the characters are likable, even if they are despicable,
and the movie even pulls off the traditional sex appeal
that is found in most of these types of movies, especially
in many of the female characters. What is also great about
Feast is that you’re never really sure who’s
going to make it out alive, or die a most gruesome, grizzly
death.
It’s
that fact that makes Feast worthy of at least a
viewing, whether it be at its limited run of midnight showings
or on DVD when it comes out a few weeks after.
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