Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre, "I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I will go for the gross-out. I'm not proud." Aside from proving the literacy of this blog, that quote sums up John Gulager's follow-up to his 2005 surprise Feast, cleverly subtitled Feast II: Sloppy Seconds. Feast II displays such a lack of the pride King speak of, one must almost respect the dedication to going farther than the first film in almost every way.
Feast II begins shortly after the events of the original film, as Biker Queen rides up to the site of the first's last stand, where she finds the stump of a hand - one with a matching tattoo - her sister. Infuriated by the loss of her sister, Biker Queen, played by Gulager regular Diane Goldner, who also played her twin in the original, digs up the director's father, Clu Gulager, back in the role of Bartender. She roughs him up, straps him to her bike and heads into town with her gang in tow.
Town, it turns out, is no safe haven. The creatures have moved on from the bar and turned the town into a buffet, killing most and leaving a handful of survivors, including the cuckolded car salesman, Slasher, his adulterous wife, Secrets, and her lover, Greg. Biker Queen and her gang soon find themselves besieged by the creatures along with the remaining townsfolk, rounded out by little people (aka "nuggets") wrestlers Thunder and Lightning and one other survivor of the bar, Honey Pie, who, you may remember, took off in a truck during an escape attempt. The group attempts to make it to the jail across the street, currently locked up tight by Hobo, who has managed to turn the building into his own private keep.Further attempts in synopsizing the film would quickly devolve into a "they went here and then they went here" affair, but you get the point. Survivors + monsters = struggle to stay alive. The story is certainly not the focus of this movie, as you've seen all there is to see of it. What this movie sets out to do is take the extreme nature of the first film and turn it to eleven. And it does.
The gore is heavier, the camera work more frenetic, the fluids more amply distributed over the cast. The effects are a step down, with some clear green screen work and CGI that often reminds the viewer that they are watching a movie, but how could you possibly forget when the camera lingers and freezes on shots of the characters being covered by monster semen? At first, I found myself appreciating the energy of the film as it barreled along, tossing away the clever inserts to describe the characters from the first film, along with their chance of survival, in favor of the characters addressing the camera directly. That sort of thing works for the most part, but after the midway point, I began to tire of the same gags.Likewise I struggled with a scene in which one of the survivors sacrifices an infant to make his own escape in a particularly graphic way, and Gulager lingers on the shot of the infant flying through the air for several seconds before resigning the child to its fate. Part of me understands and even enjoys a movie that so gleefully goes over the edge of good taste, but something about this didn't sit right. Finally, I realized, it's because there's nothing to redeem it, and I don't mean a happy ending. I mean a movie that has established a clever irreverence where an act like this doesn't seem like superfluous violence, but rather is a dash of inappropriate flavor to a film that has established its own merits.
Feast II feels like the cinematic equivalent of young boys who videotape themselves lighting their own farts. It may be silly fun for a moment, but you quickly tire of it. After a time, the whole exercise becomes juvenile and sad. By the time some of the biker girls have to sacrifice their tops to make a human slingshot, I was surprised I didn't see it coming. Writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan resemble nothing more than schoolboys, giggling at their own cleverness while cobbling together a movie that revels in being offensive more than entertaining. Sorry, but the Faces of Death years are done, and there's just no room in a world of savvy horror fans to pass this off as a real movie.I almost feel bad for Gulager, who is a capable director and has an eye for composing a scene, but the material here is beneath him. That does not exonerate him from blame, but I still think he has a heap of talent and deserves a better script than the one Melton and Dunstan saddled him with. He does what he can to keep things lively, but it's just too dumb to carry the weight of a feature film. Maybe I'm being easy on the guy, but I'd like to believe that he made the best film possible with what he had. Feast II is a cinematically retarded work that should only appeal to prepubescent boys who can't tell shock from quality.
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