September 20, 2006

FIRST LOOK: FEAST (Sept. 06) by Jsyn

Monsters! Blood! Booze! Guts! Gore! Guns! GULAGER!

Forget the eloquent writing style and twenty-five cent vocabulary words… This movie just straight-up fucking rocked! That is THE best way to describe it, enthusiastically and with expletives. Right up there with EVIL DEAD 2 and FROM DUSK TILL DAWN in terms of the fun factor. Scares and laughs at the right times, frenetic camerawork, great soundtrack, just all-around kickass time at the movies. Pay for it twice and see it again to store up fat for those lean days when your girlfriend makes you sit through THE GRUDGE 2.

Look, it’s obvious Shakespeare this ain’t… but do you really fucking care? Forget about all the “drama” of the Project Greenlight series and the stories of how the script sucked, the director was weird; the producers were dicks, whatever! The “reality” of Project Greenlight is that it’s a fucking TV show, and this is a movie that stands alone and proud! I mean, it’s a MONSTER movie about monsters trying to EAT people holed up in a roadside bar. End of story. Anything else the actors or writers bring to the table is gravy. And to top it off, it’s really funny AND fucking gross at the same time! That’s what I call a worthwhile investment of my hard-earned ticket money.

Honestly though, I gotta say FEAST is more than just a good time. Director John Gulager steps up and shits all over the “Project Greenlight curse” that has plagued those films since the first competition. No offence Guy Who Directed “Stolen Summer”, but in ten years people aren’t going to be renting your movie, they’ll still be checking out FEAST. The film is peppered with tasty bits of artsy 70’s style flair, a very dense visual palette of different textures and influences that blend together to form something wholly unique, even with the most basic premise. I mean, we’ve all seen film makers fuck up even the most surest of things when it comes to horror movies, but John Gulager nails it hard and true.

And speaking of Gulagers, it’s great to see the legendary Clu Gulager return to form as the shotgun toting’, silver-haired badass Bartender. There is just something about Clu’s mannerisms and delivery that see the cool. This guy has seen and done it all, and you can read that on every line of his face. He’s the anchor of the ensemble, and whatever casting director gave John a hard time about hiring his Pop should be kicked in the balls.

The entire cast was solid overall, with some really great moments from Henry Rollins as a catchphrase-spouting motivational speaker and Balthazar Getty as a hick douchebag. Jenny Wade who plays the sexy waitress Honey Pie is definitely a hottie to watch for. But it was Judah Friedlander who steals the show as the poor schlub Beer Guy, who really gets the shit end of the stick. His “Bill Paxton in ALIENS”-like tirades were comic gold. The way he exclaims “…EN ROUTE!” was like my favorite line in the movie. It’s still making me laugh as I write this!

The creatures courtesy of Gary J. Tunnicliffe were all teeth and claws and uh, naughty bits. Yeah, they go there, among other places. I would have personally liked to have seen more of the actual creatures but I do understand the decision to show a bit of restraint and let the audience’s imagination fill in the blanks. Regardless of what you see or don’t see as far as their anatomy, these bastards are ferocious.

So you would think all those elements combined would add up to a sure-fire crowd pleasing genre blockbuster… yeah, right. Yet again, we, the horror-lovin’ public, get the shaft courtesy of Dimension Films. In their infinite wisdom, after delays upon delays, we get two bullshit measly days of midnight showings before it gets dumped to DVD in October, while the PULSE remake and whatever the fuck mess called THE COVENANT go wide release. And don’t give me that shit, “Well SLiTHER failed to live up to expectations, so that proves people aren’t into horror-comedy”. No offence to SLiTHER (which I enjoyed) but FEAST is far superior. I call shenanigans on you, Dimension!

FEAST is a great, scary, funny, thrilling, totally-worth-your-ten-bucks movie. I urge you to attend not one, but both days of midnight screenings, raise holy hell in those theaters and have a whoopin’ hollerin’ good ‘ol fashioned time at the movies! In the meantime, hold a spot in your DVD collection for this one.

Damn, I wished they served beer at the movies! -Jsyn