Feast (2005)

"Patrons locked inside of a bar are forced to fight monsters."

I have no idea why I even watched this except that I was bored and it seemed like a good idea at the time. When I read that "Feast" was a horror-comedy, I was already dead set against enjoying it and nothing was going to change my mind. Or so I thought.

Starring nobody you've ever really heard of apart from Jason Mewes from "Clerks" (1994) and Clu Gulager from "Return of the Living Dead" (1986), "Feast" is a smorgasbord of American TV actors who are all very talented. At least two of the girls, Krista Allen and Jenny Wade, really stood out although I was surprised that only one of them made it to the end of the film. I'm not going to spoil it for you by telling you who that was either.

That's the big gimmick with "Feast", you don't know who is going to live and who is going to die. During the intro and at other times throughout the movie, what I can only describe as "Profile Cards" pop up giving details about each character and their life expectancy. It's all rather pointless though as none of the characters actually do what is expected from their profile.

In spite of being a comedy, "Feast" is ridiculously gory and nasty with it. If you wanted to compare it to another film then "Tremors" (1990) is the obvious choice but with a lot more blood and far less tension. Some people have compared it to "From Dusk Till Dawn" (1996) but that would also be giving it way too much credit.

I did quite enjoy the special effects. I think they were all practical effects which is always a bonus except when they look obviously fake. The monsters themselves were like nothing you've ever seen before but the action happened so fast with quick cuts that it was very hard to tell how good they were anyway. I'd guess that the monsters were the weakest link in the film which is why the scenes were so skilfully arranged to not show very much of them.

"Feast", for all intents and purposes, is a parody of dozens of B movie monster films with the emphasis more on gross-out comedy than real horror. It is funny in places but nothing that will make you actually laugh out loud unless you are the kind of person who my dead grandmother would have described as someone who "would laugh to see a pudding crawl".