Feast
Directed by John Gulager
Written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton
For anyone who watched Bravo’s last season of Project Greenlight—the reality show started by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck that gives amateur filmmakers a chance at making a movie—they know that this film has taken forever to be released and it looked to be the most interesting of the show’s films.
In the last season, the producers decided to take a different route from the previous two. Instead of producing yet another boring coming-of-age drama (like Stolen Summer and The Battle of Shaker Heights), the [wise] decision was made to make a horror movie. Horror legend Wes Craven was even brought on board to assist with the production.
In the show, the decision was also made to pick the most talented, albeit socially inept, director in John Gulager. If anyone remembers the early episodes, Gulager was an absolute mess in his pitch for the movie, but his short film work was so much better than any of the other contestants that his talent won out (a huge victory for the little guy in the world of Hollywood schmoozing where the biggest kiss-ass usually wins out).
The movie itself is a cross between the Evil Dead films, Tremors, Dead Alive, and the one-room-set simplicity of Saw. Gulager begins the film with a fantastic black and white, 8mm camera shot of a character picking up some road kill. This shot brings back the look of the video nasty horror films of the seventies such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
There are some things to like about Feast: the low budget look is great, the breaking of some horror conventions is welcome (a kid is brutally eaten!), the simplicity of the story (some creatures come to a bar in the middle of nowhere to eat its inhabitants, they have to fight back or be eaten alive), the funny tone, the outlandish gore (the blood even sprays on the camera in some scenes), and the unpredictability of what characters are going to survive.
Ultimately, this is a minor addition to the recent batch of low budget horror films released since 2000. Its failures come to the forefront when the writers try being to clever for their own good. The use of title cards for each character (in which we are given everything from a short description to a life expectancy) is fun at first, but the concept wears thin quickly.
Feast does confirm that Gulager was the right choice to direct this film. He has a good eye for the camera and makes every shot interesting in a gritty, low-budget way.
HDFEST grading scale
-Feast-
Story C+
Acting D-
Visuals B
Originality B-
Enjoyability B
Overall Grade C+
DVD Extras B-
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