I have to give my biggest thanks to Maven Publicity for giving me the opportunity to screen this movie! The gory and ridiculously awesome Evil Feed is quite simply a bloody good time from start to finish. It has a real sense of fun with itself and with the genre to satisfy any and all horror fans.
Join me for a crazy night at The Long Pig restaurant where all the delicacies of the human body are available for your pleasure! As the premiere place for cannibalistic cuisine, The Long Pig is now under new ownership and boss Steven has added his own brand of "Tendertainment" to the mix by hosting live fights where guests can watch their meals get tenderized before being served. But it seems like Steven might have bitten off more than he can chew when he kidnaps the wrong group of fighters for his restaurant!
The best comparison I have for what you can expect with Evil Feed is probably Kill Bill - lots of fight scenes, lots of kooky acting and dialogue, lots of crazy gore. With a quick and easy-to-follow pace and storyline, and a wit to match, Evil Feed's quality is top notch all around. The look of the film is sometimes dark but with wonderful touches of vibrant color to the costuming and set design. Everything is lit and filmed beautifully, giving it all a richness and vitality, and there is a very talented eye behind that camera lens. Certain scenes and shots are done in the perfect way to get the right reactions out of the audience. Sadly, there are only a couple of cute camera tricks like zooms and one wonderful use of split screen. A bit more of stuff like this would have really given the film more personality, even though it already has a lot of it.
The story follows two groups of people - those running The Long Pig and those trying to save their friends from being eaten. There is not really a main character, but you won't really find yourself caring that much because all of these crazy people are a joy to watch. The real standout among the actors is of course Alyson Bath as Yuki. Part adorable little sexpot, part insane psycho bitch - Yuki steals every single scene that she is in, and Bath acts her heart out with this girl. They also give her a wonderful look with the extreme eye makeup and dark lips that really match the character's dementedness.
Other people of interest are the tophat-wearing, cane-wielding Steven, rival restaurant owner Madam Dragonfly, and the crazy Chinese fighting man whose name I didn't catch. The crazy Chinese fighting man thing is a bit of a cliché but this guy totally embraced that and rolled with it all the way home. Jenna is also a pretty great female character, simply because she is the daughter of a martial arts master. Every time someone tries to attack her in the film, she gets to go against the grain and just beat the snot out of them instead of screaming and running like other female victims in horror movies.
Another great element to the movie is the amazing choice of music. Many scenes and characters are introduced with the most perfect musical cues - all upbeat and fun, full of the same quirky personality as the movie itself. The gore is also delightfully over exaggerated with all kinds of fun gags - probably the best being when a crazy, beefy fighter rips off his opponent's face and then eats it. Instead of going for a huge body count, the movie chooses to make its few kills really worth it for the audience. There's a great decapitation and some characters who lose other appendages... but I'll leave that for you to see on your own. The numerous and hilarious fight scenes are impressively well-choreographed, filmed in such a way that they were both believable enough to be real, but crazy enough to be entertaining as well.
Sadly, the movie ends on way too serious a note for my liking. The story itself comes to a great conclusion but the tone in the last five minutes or so is all wrong and so different from the rest of the film. It really needed that one last great musical cue to give the ending a real punch and keep the audience in high spirits. And actually, I found out that they
did do this ending, but they added it as a "credit cookie" - so be sure to keep watching after they roll. There's also a pretty funny original theme song to listen to during the end credits, as well.
Evil Feed is by far one of my favorite films I've watched in a long time. It gets everything right in terms of the acting and characters, the pacing, and most importantly, the gore and the sense of humor. Do yourself a favor and get your hands on this film as soon as possible. I'd be surprised if you didn't love it!
Also, I loved the sweet packaging for the film. The DVD was folded inside a menu for The Long Pig, with hilarious menu item descriptions and blurbs about the movie. So cute.
I just watched it yesterday and really enjoyed it. A bit on the corny side but it was a good mix of humor and horror. The gore level was great too. Kind of an odd movie in that it mixes martial arts with horror but it works well and is hard to walk away from. Good pacing and overall a bizarre and likeable film. I had fun with it. Good review.
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