Feast (2005)

July 8, 2018

Following the success of Good Will Hunting and a string of other successes, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck decided to give a shot at making a reality television game show. The film Project Green Light had contestants compete to create a script and ultimately a film with the winner receiving a movie deal. The season 3 script winner was a horror movie called Feast which would become a gory gross out monster survival movie. The film creates a whole new type of monster with its own mythology making it ripe for a set of sequels. Building on the 2000's move to extreme gore, the film also utilizes the genre's utilization of other gross out effects, especially vomit and bugs. The special effects are great, comedy is used sparingly, and the gore is over-the-top.

Feast is the story of a group of strangers trapped in a bar in a desolate desert who barricade themselves in side and are forced to fight off monsters. The film has a great stylized introduction where each character is introduced with a freeze frame using a descriptive pseudonym instead of any actual names. There are some great cult actors in the film including, Judah Friedlander, Henry Rollins, Clu Gulager, and even Jason Mewes is in it, playing himself.

In the opening scene the hero enters the bar shouting commands and acting like a badass, only to be torn apart by a monster moments later. What proceeds is a monster attack that rips the face off of Jason Mewes, chops the leg off a tough busty lady, and pulls a couple other people apart. The "hot chick" of the group spends most of the film being covered in other people's blood.

What is most memorable from the film is Judah Friedlander's character who gets gallons of vomit spewed upon by one of the monsters for an excessive amount of time. In the vomit are little worms that keep appearing on Friedlander's body. Gradually Friedlander's skin begins to melt, his eye is ripped out, worms crawl out of his eye socket... it is pretty damn disgusting. There were a couple moments I had to look away from the screen. Moving beyond the blood and guts of the eighties slashers, filmmakers turned to other means in the 2000s to revolt audiences. Feast achieved this goal.

The monster special effects are amazing! The monsters wear the bodies of other animals that they have killed but there is a moment when we get the reveal of what they actually look like and the costume makeup is impressive. There is also a lot of the monsters on screen in the film costing a ton of money in the movie's budget! This makes for a really fun monster movie. There is even a great scene where one lady, while two guys pin the monster down, beats the teeth (literally) out of the monster. She then proceeds to choke out the monster by shoving her fist down its throat. Brutal and awesome!

There is also a good amount of humor in the film. The monsters, aside from wanting to feast on humans, are also incredibly horny--banging each other, the humans, and even a mounted deer head on the wall. The characters also provide a needed comedic break from the gross-out fest. Crossing a comedic line with too much comedy can make a horror movie seem stupid, but this movie seems to be pretty effective in not over doing it.

Finally, the characters themselves do some horrible stuff in order to survive, a staple of the survival genre. One character uses a live person as bait, blowing her up with explosives. Another character accidently shoots another person and then lies about it afterwards. Finally, the hot girl, when she gets to the semi truck after a seemingly stupid plan succeeds, chooses to drive off instead of helping the group. This trope is also used in monster movies to reinforce the idea that man is the ultimate monster.

Feast is a great gross-out monster movie with some great characters. You come to love each of them by the end of the film, even the ones that are made to be villains. I love seeing Henry Rollins acting and Jason Mewes stumbling around without a face is great! I can see why this script one Project Green Light.