“The Feast” is another in a series of authorial, stylized, modernist combinations of psychological dramas and horror, which, unfortunately, did not justify expectations and an interesting premise. And it’s a weird film, not just because screenwriter Roger Williams and director Lee Haven Jones decided to shoot it in Welsh, not English. The atmosphere here is strange from the beginning, the camera angles are also strange, of course the characters we meet in one of those typical isolated modern houses are somewhere strange, somewhere in the solitude of rich families. The head of this rich family is British MP Gwyn, who threw himself into rabbit hunting while his wife Glenda prepares dinner or a feast from the title of the film, which, we will find out soon, includes people with whom she has some business plans.
Relationships in the family are obviously strained as Gwyn is quite disappointed with his spoiled sons, drug addict Guti and healthy drug addict Gweiryddu. A mother is, clearly, a barrier between them and she defends her sons and she acts like a typical woman from high society to whom the most important thing is to send a good image outwards. She will be helped by the silent assistant Cadi, and she will, you guessed it, play a very important role in this bizarre horror. And the story is pretty slow at first, Jones plays with the shooting angles, the style, leaves some hints and warns us from the beginning that something very bad is going to happen here.
They contrast here with almost artistic photography of the outdoor space, beautiful Welsh nature with uncomfortable almost voyeuristic angles of shooting the interior of the house. Just like Cadi, the viewer seems to get the opportunity to slowly absorb where he is and find out not only the relationships between family members, but also to understand what is bothering them. All this leads to the grand finale of the film, ie the feast itself, when a lot of things will become clearer and when this atmospheric, claustrophobic film with only minimal hints of horror and horror, almost turns into a brutal body horror. Clearly, “The Feast” is one of the films full of symbolism in which horror is actually a substitute and punishment for all the bad things people like members of this family do. However, all that remained was rather weak, somehow vague and uneven, and the horrifying crescendo in the finale didn’t quite fit into this initially slowburning fantasy. RATING 5/10.
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