The VCH Reviews "Feast"

  I picked up the new Entertainment Weekly that came in the mail on Friday and saw a short one page article that shocked and dismayed me.  The Project Greenlight movie, Feast, that was one of the first distribution victims of the Miramax/Disney/Weinstein divorce was being dumped by its new studio.  Dumped meaning that it was only being shown in a limited number of thateres ONE TIME ONLY AT MIDNIGHT.  I immediately checked the newspaper to see if Albany's little arthouse theater, The Spectrum, was showing it and they were.  As a fan of Project Greenlight and horror films, I pateintly waited through pushback after pushback for a year and a half to see this movie and I wasn't going to miss it.  It was a good thing I had picked up that magazine, which I only do half the time.

    Having said that, the movie was disappointingly mediocre.  It was not good enough to be a good movie and it wasn't bad enough to be a good bad movie.  Anytime there was action on screen, it sped up into fast motion and confusing quick cuts.  I know this was to cover the measly million dollar budget, but it's still annoying to not be entirely sure what's going on.  It looked pretty good for such a shoestring budget, but you can just tell how much better it could have been if they had gotten behind it a little more.  If Wes Craven had made this himself instead of sticking it on a reality show, it could have been better.

  I think the biggest problem, other than budget, was that the script was just all over the place.  I think Project Greenlight should have been about picking the amateur director and not also about picking amateur screenwriters.  You can probably survive one or the other, but the movie could not survive both.  The movie would have been perfect as a "wink wink" this is only a movie type movie.  And it starts out promisingly enough, as every time a character shows up, the screen freezes and there's a mini-bio including life expectancies such as, "dead in 70 minutes".  Jason Mewes was even listed as himself Occupation: Actor, Life Expectancy: Already exceeded.  Later, a character mentions that they should be careful because no had died horribly in a while.  These parts are good, but they are too far in between.  The terrible script and budget and acting do not allow for things to be presented too seriously, and yet the mood tries too hard to be tense when they should have just stuck with campy.  It would have been perfect as pure camp, but it strays too far and since it tried to be a real movie, I have to grade it as such and give it a C.