Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds
The original Feast is a deeply flawed yet thoroughly entertaining monster movie that I probably like more than I should (which is mostly attributable to the film’s development being featured in the third season of Project Greenlight. Seeing what Jon Gulager and crew went through to make the movie had me rooting for the guy to succeed). I felt the film’s greatest failing was that the script (penned by first time screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton) could have certainly used a little more polish (despite being inventive in its subversion of genre film expectations). Despite all that, I was still really excited when Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds hit DVD this week.
This second installment in the series finds Gulager, Melton, and Dunstan reuniting to create a sequel that picks up right where the first film left off. Biker Queen (Diane Goldner-who also played Harley Mom in the first film) rides up to the remnants of the bar from the first film in search of her biker sister. She finds her severed hand…and Bartender (Clu Gulager). She takes Bartender hostage and sets off for revenge-calling in her fellow biker girls for assistance. They head to the nearby town, only to discover that the monsters are still hungry-and in the process of decimating the local citizenry. What happens from there is a battle royale to the death as a ragtag group of survivors band together in an effort to hole up in the town’s sheriff’s office-a building currently occupied by a crazy meth addict who’s into solitude-while trying not to get devoured in the process.
Once again, the film’s biggest weakness is the script. Dunstan and Melton have managed to carve out a career for themselves in the wake of Feast (they’ve written Saw IV and V as well as been tapped to handle the upcoming Hellraiser remake) but the duo still hasn’t managed to write a horror film that actually lives up to their artistic potential (I think these guys can write-I’m just still waiting for them to pen something that really knocks me on my ass). Feast 2 is another frustrating example of their work-one that highlights their strengths and their weaknesses.
The first film seems to have worked at least a little more effectively because it was in an isolated locale. Feast 2 moves out of the bar and into the small town nearby with very mixed results. Within that framework, the movie essentially has three sets-a hotel, a metal shop, and a rooftop. Each provides ample opportunity for monster attacks and bloody gun battles, but they never feel quite as claustrophobic as the bar. I’m not sure why, exactly, Dunstan and Melton came to the decision to change the locales, but it doesn’t work as well as it could have.
What does work (for the most part) are the characters. Clu Gulager’s Bartender is the highlight of the film, which makes it all the more disappointing when he gets less screen time in the second half. Honey Pie returns as well (and has a great fight scene with Bartender) and gets a few really good lines. Thunder and Lightning (dwarf Mexicans-one a luchadore), a used car salesman named Slasher (Carl Anthony Payne II), his cheating wife Secrets (who has taken the tenets of The Secret to heart), her boyfriend Nick (who’s her husband’s employee) and some biker chicks (who barely ever speak) round out the cast. Nick and Secrets are the least interesting characters of the lot-everyone else is good. In a little nod to the first film, each of the characters gets a special title card introduction and monologue. Some people found that off-putting in the original Feast, but I liked it and was glad to see it return.
One interesting thing to take note of (if you watched Project Greenlight) is just who’s in this film. When making the first movie, Jon Gulager was dead set on having his girlfriend Diane Goldner in a leading role and casting his brother Tom in a prominent part as well. This never happened (despite causing lots of friction between Gulager and his casting director), but it has come to pass in the sequel. Goldner’s Biker Queen is a main character and Tom Gulager takes on the role of Nick. Both actors give credible performances and seem to vindicate Gulager’s desire to “keep it in the family” in the first film (except that I’m not sure I’d have bought Goldner in the Krista Allen role…)
Feast 2 was shot with a smaller budget than the first film, which is both a benefit and a detriment. Less money has allowed Gulager a certain amount of freedom to just cut loose and do what he wants (which allowed him to play around with the film stock, conceive and use scenes that wouldn’t have ever even been filmed in other productions, and basically just have fun without all the headaches of shooting a bigger budgeted movie). The downside of this is that the film’s FX sequences are all over the place. The monsters look decent, except that they’re shown in broad daylight with a frightening amount of regularity. Exposing even the best creature FX in the bright light shows all the flaws and that’s what happens here. I’m not sure why Gulager made the decision to shoot so much of Feast 2 in bright light, but it hurts the film overall.
The occasionally shoddy use of green-screen FX and CGI doesn’t help the cause either. There are several instances in the film where it’s painfully obvious you’re watching a green-screen shot. A little more money might have fixed this.
But let’s get past the negative-because once you do, you’ll discover that Feast 2 has a lot of funny/gory/politically incorrect moments that tend to make up for the shortcomings in spades. There’s a monster autopsy scene that reminded me of something out of Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste (and a bit of Stephen King’s Stand By Me in terms of contagious barfing), cat rape (which are two words I never expected to type together), midget catapults, dismemberments, rotting grandmothers, and an absolutely fantastic scene with an infant baby. The film has sort of an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach to its comedy, but when it hits the mark (and it does with a fair deal of regularity) it hits hard.
When it comes right down to it, Feast 2 is the kind of film that will appeal to fans of the original and probably not many other folks. It’s flawed-there’s no debating that-and it has more than its fair share of problems. I couldn’t help but like it anyway-even though I know it’s not a particularly good film. What it is, though, is gory and funny and filled with amusing performances by people who seem like they’re having a good time. That feeling is infectious-and let’s face it, it’s nice to sometimes see a genre film that just wants to entertain you for a few hours and not make you stare into the dark heart of Hell or listen to a woman scream endlessly. I’m already looking forward to Feast 3.
Horror Geek Rating: 3 out of 5
Tags: Carl Anthony Payne II, Clu Gulager, Feast, Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds, Film Reviews, Jon Gulager
October 17th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
I’m still looking forward to the third one as well but I thought this one was a pretty mixed bag. I wasn’t all that amused by the baby thing but on that one I’m pretty much being an ageist. I wanted Honey Pie to have more of a serious role in the film, I feel like the sequels could have easily been her redemption story but you can’t always get what you want.
Also, the green screen and CGI is really distracting, but as a trade off for all of that we get a hell of a lot less shaky cam, so win some lose some.