I’ve always been a fan of convention, for two reasons. The first is the obvious one that no one ever thinks about: convention gives us a set of criteria for judging something. “Conventional” things do what we expect them to–no more, no less–and in doing so, they create a standard by which new entities can be judged. The second reason I’m a fan is something that springs to everyone’s mind whenever the word “conventional” comes up: now artists can break from convention. When a genre develops conventions, it becomes boring because you generally know what to expect, but it also makes it easier for people working in that genre to sucker-punch their audience. When the audience knows exactly what to expect, then the artist knows exactly how to surprise them.
All of this comes together in “Feast”, a by-the-numbers, unconventional horror flick. The horror genre is probably the most cursed-with-conventionality milieu in which an auteur can choose to work. The “Scream” series of films only worked because as an audience, we’ve gotten used to a fairly strict formula that has pretty much gone unchallenged and remained unchanged for three or four decades.
The most commonly espoused school of thought would have you believe that convention is a bad thing. It results in repeated ventures that offer no surprises and no thrills, and show no originality on the part of the people who created it. It’s funny, though, because if you look at all of the supposedly similar blockbusters who defined the conventional horror film, you end up with a surprisingly diverse and creative collection of offerings. The Halloween series of films is certainly not the ‘same’ as the Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, but somehow, the collective zeitgeist of the movie-going public seems to think that doing things as they’ve always been done will result in a boring travesty of a film that can only be mediocre.
Why? Because major studios saw the similarities – the “conventions” – as the things that defined the genre, and they put their money into projects that upheld those conventions foremost and did other things only secondarily if at all. Obviously, the results have been catastrophic. Horror as a genre has been let down.
Unfortunately, simply defying those formulas ends up being just as shallow and unsatisfying as the films that follow them by rote. “Feast” is a fairly entertaining movie, and if you’re a horror fan, you’ll be delighted by all the ways in which it flouts convention. But when you get right down to it, it’s as soulless as all the films that created a desire to flout those conventions.
Don’t get me wrong: this is a positive review. If you like horror films – and I mean, really LIKE horror films, from slasher flicks to monster movies, and still have a working VCR because the unknown greats just haven’t been translated to DVD yet – you will seriously love this movie. The creators, whoever they are, MUST have had a love for the B-rated horror flick, because it shines through in every scene.
You’re going to watch this once, and love it. I suggest seeing it with like-minded friends and a large quantity of alcohol, because it’s that kind of movie. It goes for the group laugh and the group cheer. The characters are great, the wit displayed is extreme, and the desire to do everything different from the way the classics do it, for the sake of doing it that way, is immensely satisfying to anyone who’s disgusted by the cardboard-cut-out Japanese horror flicks and crappy sequels to solid franchises that have been visited upon us in recent years.
But while, upon watching it the first time, you’ll probably think of it as a must-own, I’d bet money it doesn’t end up something you watch often. It’s fluff, because it’s a by-the-numbers, unconventional horror flick. Ten minutes in, you know exactly what it’s going to do because you know it’s going to do the things that conventional horror flicks don’t. “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” flouted convention in a number of ways (while still being extremely “conventional” in others) and was a great movie that never fails to make me laugh and make me glad I watched it. “Feast” is going to fall flat upon repeat viewings because the jokes are great, but – in the terms of Robert A. Heinlein’s “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” – they’re “funny once.”
Having spent an awful lot of time with this caveat emptor, here’s something you can make your purchase/rental decision on: the movie’s good. Special effects are simply great, the acting is solid, and the writing is superb. This may be a soulless film, in my own view, but it’s obvious that the people behind it had a great love for the source-material they were playing with, and a great desire to do it justice.
The cast is awesome. Jason Mewes [ed: the Jay half of Jay and Silent Bob] isn’t just in the film, he’s in the film as… Jason Mewes! I get a serious kick out of any time an actor plays himself in a film due to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s portrayal of themselves in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back. Oddly enough, it turns out that since this film was a Project Greenlight film, they produced it. Unfortunately, Mewes isn’t around for long, but when he is, it’s amusing as hell. This is also the first film I’ve seen Henry Rollins do actual acting in, rather than self-parody, and he does a good job. I wasn’t familiar with anyone else in the cast by name (though I definitely recognized whoever plays the character “Bossman”), but they all rock in their respective roles.
The blood is omnipresent, and damn-well-done, which is always nice. More importantly, the monsters are great. They aren’t obviously-CGI, writhing – around – on – screen – unrealistically, lame-ass monsters, they’re sticky, slimy, ucky lizardy things that look solid and real. A masterful job by whoever did it.
The downside, from a non-theoretical point of view? The action sequences feel very digital. Every frame looks like a real frame, but the frantic cut-and-paste, splicey, second-to-second approach taken just struck me as obviously done on a computer (which isn’t a bad thing at all, for the record; god bless computers) and hard to follow (which is a bad thing). Most of the film looks like a movie, but a couple of the action-sequences look like music videos filmed under a strobe-light by a schizophrenic on PCP.
And just to underscore, the worst thing of all is that the film is ridiculously predictable due to its understandable-but-lamentably-misplaced desire to flout convention. You know who’s going to die. You know what’s going to happen. You know how it’s going to end. And saddest of all? All the little things that make a horror flick great, where genius films like Hellraiser and Halloween really differentiate themselves… well, those are the areas where this film is strictly conventional.