Feast (2005): A straight-ahead gross-out man vs. monster movie!
By Wade Wainio
All bets are off in John Gulager’s Feast, which is a significant part of its charm. Feast’s monsters are also sufficiently gnarly and nasty, competent enough at killing to send anyone fleeing. Another great thing about this movie? The characters are all relatively anonymous figures, based on standard horror movie tropes. Rather than someone named Sam, Bob, or Barbara,
we get characters like Bozo (Balthazar Getty), Honey Pie (Jenny Wade), Beer Guy (Judah Friedlander), or Coach (Henry Rollins).
How far away does Feast toss the rulebook? Right from the start, Hero (Eric Dane), the one who warned them about the oncoming monster horde, gets unceremoniously killed. Maybe you’re the type who is disturbed by this or finds it too gimmicky, but it’s an interesting way to kick things off. Plus, it’s a horror movie, so you already knew something bad was going to happen, right?
Who is Feast made for?
Feast is for anyone who desperately misses the time of mindless, gross-out death as entertainment. Sure, thought-provoking horror has its definite place, but someone you just want characters tossed into a blender to see what they’re made of. You get to learn who wanted to be a vigilante, who is going to protect the innocents, who are mostly going to laze around and complain as others do the work. It’s a movie you can pretty much smell, too, because it really gets that gross.
In any movie like this, you’re probably going to see some heated confrontations, so there are always little bits of story here and there, right? You’ll also wonder whether the characters can use the setting against a monster. As the monsters in Feast are so nasty, viewers will wonder what they might do if they pin any characters against a wall. Who fights back and how? Will someone be able to escape after stabbing it with a kitchen knife? These are all important questions.
Final thoughts on Feast
Despite not being all that successful financially, Feast did have two sequels (so far): Feast II: Sloppy Seconds and Feast III: The Happy Finish. What does that suggest? The good, old-fashioned premise that horror fans and art aficionados of all stripes should want to hear: This franchise has been at least partly about the love of the form. If it was solely, 100% about the money, there wouldn’t have been those sequels (the original box office earned $658,573 on a $3.2 million budget).
It’s pretty safe to say that, if you love straightforward, gross-out, creature feature fare, Feast will put it on your plate. John Gulager is certainly a horror fan, and so was his father, Clu Gulager (who appears in this film, and who you should recognize from The Return of the Living Dead and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge). If that’s not enough, even John Gulager’s mom, Miriam Byrd-Nethery, might be recognized for appearing as “Mama Sawyer” in Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. So Feast might even help bring your own horror family together if they are twisted and strange enough!
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