Friday, August 03, 2007

For some reason I keep watching horror movies

It's really quite hard to establish the mood necessary to create a truly scary or horrifying film. For every Exorcist or the Ring, there are dozens of the Hills Have Eyes 2. Instead of going for scary, most directors aim for funny, gory or disturbing. While the current strain of disturbing, the torture film, appears to dying a just death, the funny and gory strands continue to push forward. Feast is a misfired amalgam of the two.

It starts off well enough. The scene is an isolated bar in the desert southwest. Each character is introduced with a stereotypical label, Beer Guy, Grandma and so on, their job or reason to be at the bar and their life expectancy. There are a few good meta-level jokes here. Jason Mewes (Jay of Jay and Silent Bob) appears and is identified as "Jason Mewes" and then there is a joke about his still being alive.

Beyond that the jokes get a bit weak and the movie becomes a long string of icky deaths. And becomes boring. The characters are so thin, that we don't really care in what order or the manner in which they die.

Henry Rollins is an occasional highlight. He plays a slick Southern California life coach who tries to psych up the other victims. Since they were getting all meta, I was hoping he would bust out "Liar." No such luck.

In the end, like most horror movies, this might make for a nice diversion at a slumber party, but not much else. But in that case you should watch something really crazy like Sleepaway Camp.

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