Feast

All things bright and beautiful, this film will eat them all…

You’ve seen this red neck bar before in the works of Mr Tarantino and earlier in the vampire film, Near Dark. Here an assortment of almost-humans end up having to defend themselves from a bunch of rampaging thingies lurking outside.

The motley crew consist of the bar manager, the beer delivery guy, the bartender, a couple of waitresses and a few patrons - one or two with their own agenda - and the young son of one of staff. Into this group burst two newcomers who have been attacked on the road by something with many teeth.

With the lines drawn, it is a fight to the death between hunter and hunted.

In Shaun Of The Dead, there was only one rifle and very limited ammunition for our heroes to use - if only they’d been in a Texas bar where munitions and guns are as abundant as cheese and onion crisps.

Feast came about through the Project Greenlight reality TV series wherein Dimension Films and Miramax - in the shape of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon - bankrolled beginners' film efforts. Feast was the project for the third season, changing gear from the art house fare of the earlier seasons to no-holds-barred-blood-and-thunder horror.

The gamble seems to have paid off. Greeted with enthusiasm by no less than Aintitcool.com’s Harry Knowles the film attained instant fan-boy street cred. The result is an exuberant gore-fest continually winking at the audience and doing its level best to offend and gross out.

There is no back story, no excuses - just monster mayhem and buckets of blood.

The film’s best gag is that each character is introduced with a title card announcing their identity, a fun fact and their chances of survival. These are hilarious (especially in light of subsequent plot developments).

The cast comprises an interesting mix of feisty females and dorky guys, with genre vet Clu Gulager and ex-Black Flag singer Henry Rollins standing out. It's also good to see Navi Rawat get something more interesting to do than be a math nerd’s girl in Numb3rs.

On the down side, the smaller monsters occasionally resemble the beasties from Eighties flicks such as Ghoulies and get to indulge in unnecessarily vulgar antics.

Overall, a fun effort in a genre that badly needs an infusion of new blood, that will help keep fans happy until Stephen King’s The Mist hits theatres in 2008.