by kellie abrahamson kabrahamson1@aol.com
The Matt Damon/Ben Affleck vehicle “Project Greenlight” lasted for three seasons before signing off. The series took aspiring screenwriters and directors and allowed them to make a movie while filming the process. The results were both interesting and entertaining; with behind-the-scenes drama taking center stage in a way most people had never seen. In the first two seasons, “Project Greenlight” produced a pair of coming-of-age stories that were, by most accounts, forgettable and not profitable. The third and final season focused on making a genre film. A script by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton called Feast ended up winning the right to be made and a strange little man by the name of John Gulager was chosen to be behind the camera. After sitting on the shelf in distribution hell for about a year, the finished product was finally revealed to the public last month with late night showings in cities around the country. Now Feast is available on DVD.
The story is simple. In a lonely bar in the middle of nowhere, a group of people get an unpleasant surprise: a family of blood-thirsty monsters is on the prowl and looking for some human flesh to munch on. These toothy beasts are fast, agile and smart, picking off the bar patrons one by one and terrorizing those fighting to survive. The film stars Navi Rawat (TV’s “The OC”), Krista Allen (Anger Management), Balthazar Getty (Ladder 49), Judah Friedlander (TV’s “30 Rock”) and Henry Rollins (Bad Boys II).
Given that nearly every aspect of the filmmaking process was captured on film for the TV show, the Feast DVD is surprisingly skimpy on the bonus features. First up is an audio commentary track with Gulager, producers Mike Leahy and Joel Soisson, writers Dunstan and Melton and creature and makeup special effects director Gary Tunnicliffe. The track is at times kind of funny but for the most part ends up being a bit of a mess thanks to the amount of people talking at once. It’s a little hard to keep track of each voice but even a muddled audio commentary is better than no commentary at all. Five deleted scenes including an alternate ending can be found in the “Blood on the Cutting Room Floor” section. These missing scenes, which ran at around seven minutes total, were deserving of the cut, adding little to the final product. Next is one of the disc’s two featurettes, a brief look at the making of the film titled “Horror under the Spotlight: Making Feast”. Here, filmmakers and actors talk about what it was like to have every minute on set filmed and how nice it was to do re-shoots without the hassle of being followed by the Project Greenlight crew. The second featurette is “The Blood and Guts of Gary Tunnicliffe” which gives a brief history on the effects guru’s history along with some insight into the costumes and buckets of blood used in the film. “A Small Feast of Outtakes” follows, showing three minutes of flubs by the cast. These really weren’t that funny and have little re-watch ability. Finally, a 30 second promo for the Feast soundtrack rounds out the bonus features. I sincerely doubt the extra-low budget look of this commercial will drive anybody to the store to pick up this CD but names like Narwhal and The SmashUp might.
Feast is a blood-drenched gore-feast with a sense of humor. At times absurdly funny, at other times hard to watch, the film is an homage to campy splatter flicks of yore, taking audiences on a ride and never letting up. The movie breaks most of the rules, killing off people it shouldn’t or has promised not to by way of character intros with a section stating each one’s “life expectancy”. If you were one of those who tuned in to see the drama unfold on “Project Greenlight,” you know that Feast was made on a shoestring budget. Those who missed the show will, for the most part, never suspect that. The special effects, all produced without the use of CGI, are very well done and realistic, allowing the viewer to further immerse himself in the action. A minor complaint would be that the editing during the said action is a little too choppy, disorienting the audience and turning the stomachs of those who are prone to motion sickness. The low budget accounts for most of this and for that reason alone I can let it slide.
Overall, I have to say that the sketchy, nervous, slightly out-of-his-league John Gulager was able to turn out a fairly good first film. It needed a bigger budget to really make it memorable, but for a movie no one was expecting much from, Feast delivers. I recommend this film to anyone who likes splatter flicks or those who watched “Project Greenlight” and are curious to see what the odd little man created. It was certainly worth the wait.
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