Review of Feast (2005) by Devon — 13 May 2009

Lots of modern horror films attempt to spoof the cliches of the genre while still being scary. Often though, the end result is mixed between good (Slither) and bad (Cabin Fever). Feast falls somewhere in the 'bad' territory.

It certainly has plenty of humor, from the way it introduces each character to the monsters' procreation skills, but what it lacks is the horror element, which is instead replaced with simple gross-out gimmicks.

Much like Cabin Fever or even Hostel to a degree (I thought the original Hostel was fairly clever), Feast mistakes maggots and slime for real horror. The plot is simple: a group of bar patrons are trapped in the bar by a group of monsters, and must figure out a way to either escape or kill the monsters.

The monsters are actually pretty nonsensical, they fill the typical movie monster requirements in that they're super-fast, super powerful, and super sneaky, all while being 8 feet tall. They're also incredibly ridiculous looking, as sometimes they're simple rubber latex and others they look exactly like the monsters from "The Village", minus the red cloaks.

I kept hoping for something original to pop out at me during the film, but inbetween the nonsense (at one point, one of the monsters vomits slime-covered maggots all over one of the characters- twice), we get scenes taken almost directly from other, better horror movies ("Night of The Living Dead" for example).

The movie itself comes from a television show called "Project Greenlight" which I've never seen, but it's produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, I think in an attempt to find the next "Good Will Hunting", or at least give young filmmakers the same opportunity they had when making that film.

With Feast, they needn't have bothered.