Feast (2006)

Horror-comedy is not my favorite genre. Typically the “comedy” piece of the pie is just a bit too slapstick for my palate and the “horror” piece not nearly as intense and gory as I like.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. Shaun of the Dead , for example, is a very successful horror comedy, as is Braindead (Dead Alive U.S.). The secret sauce to the effectiveness of these films is that they take the horror part seriously and respect the horror genre, and then capitalize on the inherent comedic value of situational horror. Feast is hereby added to this category.
Feast begins by giving the viewer character background of some barfly-type folks hanging out in a seedy saloon somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Each character, upon introduction, enjoys a freeze-frame where the moviemakers impart such details as name, occupation and likelihood of survival. From the beginning this flick was very interesting.

Suddenly a strapping young man toting a shot gun bursts into the bar and tells a tale of horrific monsters headed this way. The bar will have to be barricaded with doors and windows sealed, if anyone is to survive. Of course nobody takes this man seriously…until he is consumed by some unseen force outside the window and collapses headless on the barroom floor. This flick doesn’t slow down a lick from there (no really...about four characters get killed in one minute).

The hapless group of bar patrons become trapped inside the tavern with a family of mauling monstrosities lurking outside. What are they? Nobody knows…all we do know is that they are fast, violent and hungry.The remaining scenes in Feast revolve around the fight and the escape plan. Oh, and a TON of killer gore done with skill and ingenuity. The characters are well developed, which is unusual for this type of movie. Infact almost every character had a purpose in the movie (the rest served just to raise the body count). The acting is done well for such a low budget movie.

However, I did find a few annoyances throughout the flick. Main point is that this film tried to hide the monster as much as possible by using shacky camera methods and quick editing. Unfortunatley it dosnt work that well, since this is a very action oriented film. It works well for films such as Alien since it was slow paced and developed the monster. The shacky camera also gave me headaches (bad memories from Cloverfield).

A small note on the monsters themselves. This film uses prostetics (yayayayay). The monsters looked scary when you only got a glimpse at them, but when they were fully exposed...they looked ok. But still it was a great choice going for prostetics.

Another point is that there is NO plot. It explains nothing. Its a bunch of people trapped in a bar thats being attacket by monsters. It dosnt explain the orogins of the monsters or why they are doing these things. This didnt destroy the movie completely since it was more of an action flick.

This is a great movie to pass the time and is very original and different. Not for everyone though.
I give it a 6.5/10