Booze Talkin #16

Last Updated on July 26, 2021

The Feast Trilogy:

WTF Happened?

In a world filled with direct-to-DVD horror, you’d think a franchise with this much potential would flourish. Director, John Gulager, and writers, Marcus Dunstan & Patrick Melton started it all by taking the top spot on the third season of the sorely missed ‘Project Greenlight’ and ended up winning the hearts of horror fans across the world with their final product. FEAST is fucking fantastic. It’s a film that pisses all over the most common of cliches, successfully manages it’s humor and scares, and introduced some of the meanest, grossest, and horniest monsters we’ve ever seen. Sure, the constraints of Project Greenlight didn’t allow the film to turn out like it should have (yet, provided some quality reality TV drama) but it made it that much easier to forgive for it’s flaws and delivered it with a built-in cult following. It’s also why I had such high hopes for FEAST II: SLOPPY SECONDS.

Almost immediately, you can tell the sequel has lost the personality of the original. Functioning outside of the bar seemed to be more of a struggle for the writers than their characters. Too much humor is taken from the monsters and left up to a slew of interchangeable new faces that distract more often than entertain. Still, the glimpses of brilliance are there. The dissection scene and, more importantly, the baby scene provided me with some of the greatest laughs of the series. With part three on the way, my anticipation trumped any disappointment. Bring it on.

The opening moments of the FEAST III: THE HAPPY FINISH shows a monster decapitating one of the franchise’s longest running heroes. It then devours the head and, seconds later, shits it out onto the street. That coupled with the arrival (and sudden departure) of Shitkicker had brought my love for these films full circle. But with every beginning, there comes an ending – and the end of this film is complete garbage. Instead of the off-beat and original closure I was expecting from these guys, we get a nonsensical visual gag that seems lifted from shit like EPIC MOVIE and DATE MOVIE. The middle has it’s flashes (anal rape, RAMBO reference) but overall is just a jumbled mess of a film filled with unnecessary infected humans and even more useless over-the-top characters taking time away from the monster mash.

Maybe it’s the booze talking but I think there’s a lot of good here to be salvaged. Just maybe not with these characters and this setting. Take the monsters (the only real stars) out on the town. Show me where they hang out when they’re not raping cats and vomiting on old ladies. From what I’ve heard, part four is already written. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I’ll be there. As long as there’s monsters.