Considering Project Greenlight’s track record, atop Matt Damon and Ben Affleck arrogantly disregarding Wes Craven’s opinion that the script was utter crap, alongside the Weinstein collective backing the work, John Gulager’s Feast should have placed well below the steady barrage of PG-13 horror fiascos which are currently defacing the genre at a rate more embarrassing than the slasher era ever thought of doing. However, somehow, someway, Feast turned out to be one of the most impressive splatterhouse horror comedies in recent memory. Go figure.
Put as simply as it is presented, a group of barflies attempt ward off a family of monsters who are threatening to tear everyone from limb-to-limb.
What comprises a splatterhouse flick? Typically the recipe calls for a blatant disregard for character development in favor of gratuitous, visceral action; a very gritty, repulsive setting; and relentless balls-to-the-wall action, which commences shortly after the opening credits and ceases only moments before the end credits. Check, check, check,
and for good measure, check.
It becomes obvious early into the feature that Gulager’s itinerary didn’t exactly include making a piece of substantial cinema, but to produce a slice of escapist eye candy of the first rank. With this in mind, not only are we given prime schlock, but the screenwriters–Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton–cunningly allot us character names which highlight that we aren’t to have the slightest concern for those onscreen. As if “Heroine,” “Bozo,” “Beer Guy,” “Honey Pie,” and “Boss Man” weren’t enough, to further accentuate that grindhouse intends to offer nothing of value (thus automatically negating any elitist complaint that the film wasn’t good [insert visual picture of Egregious Gurnow slapping himself upside the forehead with the palm of his hand]), we go through three characters who carry the title of “Hero” before one steps up with a few seconds remaining before the film’s closing credits, thus managing to make it out of the film alive by mere chance.
To add more salt to the critical commentarians’ wounds, we are granted a “life expectancy” rating for each figure as he or she is introduced, hereby comically mocking, not only the genre’s bloodlust, but anyone who is stupid enough to try to apply critical rigor to a self-professed piece of Southern-fried horror fun. What’s left is the boldfaced declaration that, no, we don’t care about the people and, yes, we are here to see people die. Any questions?
And on that note, not since Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive or Lucio Fulci’s heyday has a film drenched us in so much gore of different colors, viscosities, and densities. One representative scene involves a character puking at the sight of another, the latter having had his eye pulled out of its socket. Indeed, the unrelenting, undiscriminating nature of our antagonists create a quandary which make the Jackass crew come off as chickshits at best as we are left wondering, but not really caring, who will be left (unlike in so many other films which the lines of “expendable” and “name actor” are so clearly drawn that they leave only the blind and deaf in eager anticipation of the film’s outcome).
Continuing on, Gulager wisely dismisses positing an explanation for the creatures’ existences because, once again, we’re not here to examine the human predicament writ large. All that matters is that we have a From Dusk Till Dawn scenario with excessively horny monsters, that look to be a hybrid between Stephen Herek’s Critters and Ridley Scott’s Alien, who have fetishes for Native American apparel. That said, how can anyone make serious accusations about a storyline which houses a gigantic monster penis which would undoubtedly humble a frisky stallion?
Though we can’t offer any disagreements with Feast’s plot because to do so would be aesthetically futile (and thus defeating the film’s purpose of not having one outside of pure entertainment), I will pause to state that, like Neil Marshall’s The Descent, the film’s editing is a bit hyperactive in that we must wait until an action sequence subsides before taking a quick body count in order to determine exactly what occurred. Yet, to counter this grievance, how many horror monsters can you name that would have the gall (obviously Gulager’s has the balls) to tear the pants clean off Henry Rollins? (A: Apparently Gulager himself in that he then places Hank in a pair of pink sweatpants shortly thereafter . . . .)
Some state that there exists an inverse ratio in relation to the number of hands in a creative work and the quality of the final product. Astonishingly, twenty (yes, twen-ty) producers, a million eyes and conflicting expectations looking on, and an ice cube’s chance in Hell later, John Gulager’s Feast somehow preserved long enough, and with just enough “umph,” to become one of the most impressive grindhouse works of escapist, horror comedy schlock in recent memory. In short, few throw-away works of horror actually offer a guaranteed good time with a group of boisterous friends and a case of beer, thus proving that to make a supposedly good, yet pointless, film is harder than it might seem. Yet Gulager pulls off what so many have putridly failed to do while simultaneously throwing many a naysayers’ condescensions back in their own faces.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
