Review of Bitter Feast (2010) by Patrick E — 05 Mar 2011

The revenge sub-genre of horror is one of the most used which leads to an awful lot of films that are far too similar. Coming up with an interesting concept and back story that hasn't been done before is a difficult task but it's one that writer/director Joe Maggio has succeeded in doing with Bitter Feast, it's just a shame that the execution didn't quite live up to the back story.

Peter Grey is a celebrity chef who has his own TV show and is head of an up market restaurant. It all starts to go wrong for him though when notorious food blogger JT Franks writes a scathing review of his food that leads to Grey's TV show being axed and him losing his job at the restaurant. Grey doesn't take this too well and he decides to kidnap Franks and make him endure various food related torture in order to get his own back.

In all honesty, the only thing that makes Bitter Feast stand out from the multitude of other revenge film is the concept, forcing your victim to cook food perfectly or to eat potentially dangerous food items to stay alive is certainly a unique one. It's just a shame that the rest of the film is nothing new and in fact a little boring at times, particularly the second act. That being said, there is some nice effects work and the acting from the cast of unknowns is very good. Billed as horror film, I would be more likely to call it a thriller as there are no scares to be found here unless you consider the torture scenes to be chilling. The ending is a frustrating one, at one point it seemed as if Maggio was going to go against the usual Hollywood ending but instead he tacked on a final scene which made it a little more conventional. It's a pity as this would have made the film stand out a little more.

In the end, Bitter Feast is a solid enough low budget direct to DVD film. It has an interesting concept and some good scenes but the many bad points prevent it from being memorable. It's certainly worth a look though.