Feast II: Sloppy Seconds

 

 

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Very disappointing follow-up to "Feast". Everything that made the first one so enjoyable is absent from this sequel. I was bored for long stretches of the movie. The characters were uninspired and poorly acted. There wasn't a truly clever moment to be found until the end credits. Some key moments that should have been funny or shocking were over-directed, killing the moment by stretching it into minutes. The scene most guilty of this crime is the "Baby" scene. Could've been a great moment if it had been kept short and sweet, but it drags on, showing the baby's suffering and misery. Yeah, if you have a problem with babies being "thrown to the dogs", so to speak, maybe pass on this one. Poor writing, bad direction, so-so acting.

On the positive side, there were some sporadic one-liners that brought on a chuckle or two, a little person's gigantic shlong flopping around, lots of bodily fluids and gore, and even some topless biker babes, but none of it makes up for how sloppy everything else is. Here's hoping that Part 3 redeems the franchise. If the subtitles for the sequels continue to be accurate in describing the quality of the movie, then "The Happy Finish" should be just the thing to get the bad taste of "Sloppy Seconds" out of my mouth.

Make no mistake: this is crap. But it's energetic crap that does everything it can to try to please (short of actually spending any money to do it, that is). Dimension Films appear to have a sequel system in place, in which every new horror film they put out gets a sequel whether it warrants one or not, and then a third one just in case there's anyone still hanging on who happens to have the price of a rental in their pocket and hope springing eternal in their breast. A very firmly established law of diminishing returns reigns in the Dimension sequel factory, apparently by design: the first sequel gets about twice as much time and money lavished on it as the final film, and in the case of Feast 2 and 3 they may actually have been made back to back, without a break in production. And, at 76 minutes each, and both running far too long, there was just about enough meat to make one pretty damned good little movie if you edited them both together. The editing is the enemy here: it is TERRIBLE, and clearly the product of someone who was told to stretch it to within spitting distance of feature length. Personally, I'd be okay with an hour or less if it meant not having to suffer through fifteen minutes of padding and scenes blown by being dragged past the breaking point in each film.

But you have to admire the Gulagher family for seizing the opportunity to make another movie (and then, after that, a final half-a-movie), and TREATING it like an opportunity rather than a chore. I would venture to say that Feast 2, warts and all, will actually linger longer in my memory than the first one, which I know I saw but remember exactly one scene from, because Gulagher clearly believes, as I do, that a microbudget is better than no budget at all, and not to be sneezed at. Feast 3, on the other hand, feels padded by a full half an hour at only 76 minutes, has an unwatchable underground strobe light battle that seems to go on forever, and contains glaring continuity errors that appear to be the result of footage that never got shot. Still, with the Feast films (#2 in particular), you get more than you really have a right to expect from Dimension, or, for that matter, really deserve.

P.S.: If you bother with them after seeing Pulse 2 and 3, that is. Egad. You'd think some young enthusiastic horror buff out there might have been able to do something with the idea of a world taken over by lonely ghosts -- particularly with the Japanese original to crib from -- but Dimension, rather than finding even an enthusiastic half-talent -- like Gulagher here -- hired directors who had neither interest nor invention, and produced garbage that cut corners to the point of not even leaving the studio for long stretches, choosing instead to stand actors in front of greenscreens, resulting in footage that looked like it had been prepared for a fifteen year old live action video game.

By Dimension standards, Gulagher is Orson Welles. Give the man some credit for at least trying not to rob you, horror fans. Would have been nice if they'd been able to afford the blonde for the third installment, however.

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