Feast had a bit of a name for itself before it was even seen thanks to the fact that it was the winner of the third season of Project Greenlight. But would the film deliver? Well, it's not a classic by any stretch but it sure is a whole lot of dumb, gory fun.

The premise is about as simple as it gets – a group of people made up of a bartender (Clu Gulager), the boss man (Duane Whitaker of Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III), two waitresses (Krista Allen and Jenny Wade), the beer delivery guy (Judah Friedlander) and a few customers (Jason Mewes, Henry Rollins, Josh Zuckerman and Balthazar Getty) – are sitting in a bar out in the middle of nowhere. A man rushes in covered in blood and wielding a shotgun ordering them to do what he says if they want to survive. Unsure what to think of all of this, they kind of give him a blank stare until a monster eats him and rips off his head. From there, the would be hero's wife comes looking for him only to find his dead body missing its head. One of the monsters gets inside, rips off Jason Mewes' face and humps a deer head mounted to the wall and the race is officially on. The rest of the movie simply our band of humans trying to figure out how to outwit the monsters that have surrounded the bar so that they can make it out of there alive.

If the plot sounds a little bit like the last half of From Dusk Till Dawn that's because the movie definitely has its share of similarities from the premise to some of the humor used throughout. That being said, Feast gets enough right that even if it isn't going to take home any awards for originality it is still a whole lot of fun to watch. First and foremost is the gore quotient. This is one wet movie and it doesn't shy away from some seriously impressive doses of the red stuff. It's a bloody, messy, splattery movie with some impressive and disgusting effects work and a nice lack of CGI enhancement. Maggots pile out of an eye socket, a face gets punched into a pulp and then the victim's innards are torn out through it's throat. Feet are blown off. Legs are severed. A face is torn right off of its skull and there's a lot of green monster puke. There's a repulsive but hilarious castration scene and lots of gurgling and spitting of blood and thankfully the camera does not shy away from even a second of it. Director John Gulager (son of Clu who plays the bartender), in his directorial debut, has crafted a surprisingly gory monster movie the likes of which we haven't seen in quite some time.

The other really big plus that the movie has working in its favor is the humor, most of which comes from the stereotypical characters that the writers have set up for us and how, in turn, many of them are knocked down. The beginning of the film does a 'freeze frame' on each of the characters when we see them for first time and when it does we see facts about them, their nicknames, and their life expectancy and it's funny to see how, later in the movie when it all hits the fan, the filmmakers completely toy with those expectancies. The actors play to the stereotypes that have been created for them (Rollins doing a particularly good job of playing his 'motivational speaker' part while covered in blood and wearing ladies pink track pants) and they do a fine job of it. The result is a sort of self referential horror movie that, despite some awkward dialogue, works quite well as a send up of the genre that it so gleefully wallows in.

The main problem with the film, aside from the fact that it is fairly derivative, is the camera work and the editing. Part of the reason that the film cuts so fast is likely to make us feel like we're in the thick of things with the characters and another reason might be so that we don't get too lingering a look at the monsters but there are scenes in this film that are cut so fast and with such quick moving camerawork that it's hard to tell just what exactly is going on. Even with these flaws, however, horror movie fans should enjoy Feast - it's insanely fast paced with a great ensemble cast of fun actors and actresses, it's gory as Hell, and it's pretty damn funny too.

Video:

The 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is quite good but it isn't flawless. There are a few scenes with some slightly noticeable compression artifacts as well as some rather obvious line shimmering in places as well. The image is pretty clean but sometimes fine detail does get a little murky in the darker scenes. Overall, though, everything here is acceptable even if it could have been better. Color reproduction is good (things are intentionally brown and yellow toned here) and flesh tones look lifelike and natural. The camera moves around a lot and when it does, it moves fast so there's a little bit of blurriness to some of these scenes but that seems to have been intentional on the part of the filmmakers.