Review: Feast 2

Last Updated on July 27, 2021

PLOT: Picking up immediately after the nightmarish events of the first film, FEAST 2 drags the monsters and the trashy idiots on their menu out in the open; the gooey showdown takes place in a desert town populated by venal jerks, lesbian bikers, and pint-sized wrestlers. Good luck finding someone to root for!

REVIEW: “Sloppy” indeed. If there was ever a movie that was made purely for shock value, FEAST 2: SLOPPY SECONDS is it. Its heart is in the slop, its brain is on vacation, its morals would chill the bones of a sadist. All worthy attributes for a horror film, sure, but what it has in balls it lacks in competence. Let’s just say it’s good at being bad, and good at nothing else. (Here’s hoping that makes a lick of sense.)

Fans of the first film (like myself) will remember that we’re left with a cliffhanger of sorts at the conclusion: Our heroes Bozo (Balthazar Getty), Tuffy (Krista Allen) and Wheels (Josh Zuckerman) leave the wreckage of the bar to rescue a child in a nearby small town. But their journey will have to wait until FEAST 3 comes around, because our focus is on the left-for-dead Bartender (the great Clu Gulager) who somehow survived the ordeal. He’s picked up by Biker Queen (Diane Goldner), the twin sister of Biker Mom, who was killed (with a little unwitting assistance from Bozo and co.) by the crusty creatures who serve as the series’ lumbering antagonists. Seeking some measure of justice, Biker Queen straps the Bartender to her bike, rides into town to rendezvous with her cohorts and of course comes face to face with the perverted monsters who are already in the process of tearing the place apart.

The bikers and bartender team up with an assortment of quirky characters (including a couple of midget wrestlers, a blustery used car salesman, his cheating wife and her scuzzy lover), hold themselves up in a warehouse, and devise various plans of escape/offense, none of which are very well thought out. Meanwhile, Honey Pie (Jenny Wade) – the adorable waitress who selfishly abandoned everyone in the first film – is similarly stuck in the town, undergoing tribulations rancid enough to make her repent and then some…

Even though the first FEAST had an often undisciplined technical style, it also maintained a drumming, steady narrative flow and a palpable feeling of chaos. FEAST 2 is just plain unrestrained. It moves in frustrating fits and starts, providing a jaw-dropping image of depravity one minute, then losing our attention while it twiddles its thumbs the next. It resembles a work-print most of the time, full of half-baked effects and ad-libbed gags. There are long stretches, especially in the 2nd Act, that completely bore, and usually the only way it knows how to spring to life is to spray monster jizz or vomit in our faces. That gets old quick. (Seriously, someone needs to tell Gulager and the boys that excessive puking can’t always be the go-to gross-out gag. There’s even a randomly introduced character named “Puker”.)

Eventually the survivors barricade themselves on a roof, which is a big mistake because apparently these scenes were shot in front of a greenscreen and the effect is terribly unconvincing. A bizarre escape scheme involving a homemade catapult is put into action and effectively milked for a few twisted laughs, especially when a melting grandma is forcibly involved. But the movie’s height of black humor/repugnance involves an infant in a sequence that acts like a litmus test for our tolerance of bad taste. I failed – or is it passed? Whatever, no decent human being will forgive you for laughing.

Visually the movie often looks like those grainy, handheld tangents that Oliver Stone often likes to cut away to, and it quickly becomes obvious that no concrete visual style is being attempted. Furthermore, nothing is really being attempted, other than an exercise in revulsion: FEAST 2 doesn’t take itself seriously, but it doesn’t take us seriously either, so the whole experience feels like a drunken bullshit session where neither party cares how the other is reacting. The first FEAST was made for horror movie lovers, to be enjoyed with friends and beers; SLOPPY SECONDS was made to play in the background while you barely pay attention.

5/10