Review: Feast


Scummy inhabitants of a scummy bar are trapped inside whilst nasty, flesh-eating monsters try to get in for feeding time. Navi Rawat plays ‘heroine #1’, Krista Allen is a MILF, Balthazar Getty is the town jerk, Clu Gulager the bartender, Eileen Ryan is a barfly, Jason Mewes is apparently playing himself (was he just a barfly who wandered in thinking it was a real bar?), and Henry Rollins is a pacifist self-help guru.

 

The making of this schlocky 2005 horror-action pic from first-timer John Gulager (son of veteran character actor Clu Gulager), was seen on the Ben Affleck/Matt Damon brainchild “Project Greenlight”. That fact is just about the most interesting thing associated with this glib, worthless, messy piece of snot.

 

It spends far too much time with its smart-arsey head up its own arse (cute little profiles for each of the characters, telling us the likelihood of their survival. Not cute, but annoying, really and lame. Mewes’ inclusion is particularly stupid, and ultimately worthless), and not enough time making it all worth watching. I’m all for tongue-in-cheek, but why should we give a shit about anyone or anything here if director Gulager himself doesn’t appear to? The characters are mostly insufferable, anyway. It’s not just in the story and characterisation that the film seems determined to provide the least amount of entertainment. Even though the film offers up plenty of nasty, squishy-sounding gore (a little kid even gets killed early on!), it’s edited and shot in such a frustratingly ADHD manner that you can’t enjoy any of it, because you can’t see a fucking thing! The whole thing keeps the audience at a distance from start to finish.

 

The amazingly hot Rawat, whose casting the director was apparently not happy about (from what I’ve read) is a shining light, having a slight Sigourney Weaver quality. But she’s a rose in a dung pile (Getty isn’t awful, but not exactly a magnetic screen presence. I’m guessing Richard Grieco, Costas Mandylor and Judd Nelson all failed to return the director’s calls), and sadly, not in the film all that much, either. Shameless waste of actor/musician/spoken word genius Rollins too in a dumb role. And speaking of shameless waste, why cast the bodacious Krista Allen in your film and then have her play the decidedly unsexy role of a single mother?

 

It wants to be somewhere in between “Day of the Dead” and “From Dusk Till Dawn”...it ends up being a waste of space, and anti-entertainment. The useless screenplay by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (fellow “Project Greenlight” winners who went on to write “The Collector” and several of the “Saw” sequels).

 

Rating: D+

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