Feast (2005)
Customers and staff at a bar in the middle of the desert find themselves surrounded by a group of unknown entities that wish to viciously consume them. FEAST was the third film production devised from Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's television series Project Greenlight and remains the only film to be successful in any shape or form. That's not really saying much considering the two former projects (and the current one being shown on the HBO reboot) were and are pure indie drivel. That all being said, this horror-comedy should be very thankful it has some beneficial features because the whole project is a near-disaster. Director John Gulager (son of veteran actor Clu Gulager, who appears here) wisely keeps the proceedings moving fast but is severely hampered by his pretentious skills; the movie starts off with an unnecessary title sequence shot on Super 8 and using a real dead dog and it often stops in its tracks to display some meta name-cards and stats of its players. Screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, who would go on to plot out the later SAW films, throw in a few interesting curveballs when it comes to character mortality and audience expectations but they often double-down on confusing or nil characterization, toilet and sexual humor, total idiotic behavior, and rancid creative decisions. The script gets so bad that it literally shows us that if a character proceeds to do nothing throughout the ordeal, he or she will have a 100% chance of survival. So what barely saves this from complete destruction? What else: the killer gore/practical effects. When Gulager is not annoyingly shaking the camera or embedding a tasteless rape gag, the technical crew get to showcase impressive creature costumes, delightfully gross heaps of plastic, and gallons of blood, bile, and other fluids. Some decent acting also helps, largely from Judah Friedlander as a delivery man who gets infected, Balthazar Getty as the resident jackass, and Eric Dane in a small role.
FINAL REVIEW: 2 / 5
Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008)
I may have some wildly mixed feelings on the first film but my aim is true on this one. FEAST II: SLOPPY SECONDS will go down as one of the absolute worst sequels I have ever seen. Hell, I can even throw it in consideration for worst film ever. Cry all you want about how Jason spends an entire film on a boat or how Batman has a bat-credit-card but if you had to sit through this direct-to-video garbage, you too will be in agreement. So the evil creatures are now roaming all over the town and we follow a new group of survivors. Good luck trying to care for them as they are all either annoying beyond belief or blank vessels. One character returns from the previous film (continuing her perfect skill of surviving by doing nothing), another retroactively survives despite having a heart attack and bleeding out from a torn throat, and another one is played by the director's wife and just so happens to be the twin sister of a joke character. We also have a T&A-friendly biker gang, two mini wrestlers/key makers (one who is Fake Mascarita Sagrada), an almost racist car salesman, his new age wife and her lover, and a meth dealer who is super important but has utterly nothing to do. These losers pad out 100 minutes by proceeding to run around, sit inside a warehouse, and then stand around a green-screened rooftop. There is pitiful interaction with the creatures, who here look very amateurishly built and redesigned. The weather changes from raining to overcast to brightly sunny in every shot. There's an autopsy scene included solely for the corpse to pee, poop, puke and jizz all over the women, who all then begin to vomit, turning this so-called horror-comedy into a disturbing fetish porno. Director Gulager's pretentiousness is amplified by black-and-white interview segments, a segment shot in night vision, and a dream sex scene. There's an infuriating sequence where a character is lambasted by the others for sacrificing a baby (yes, the movie goes there), only for them to throw an injured friend over the edge instead of the one who is practically a zombie, solely as a distraction so they can steal a motorcycle to make a catapult (?!), only for the disabled live meat to suddenly just get up with ease and book it. And then this piece of junk has the audacity to end on a cliffhanger, despite not even getting close to ending Act Two in the story yet! Oh gods above and anyone reading this, please give me the strength to get through the third one and be done with this dreadful franchise.
FINAL REVIEW: 1 / 5
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