VOD REVIEW: EVIL FEED / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR: KIMANI RAY SMITH / SCREENPLAY: AARON AU, KIMANI RAY SMITH, JANA MITSOULA / STARRING: LACI J. MAILEY, TERRY CHEN, ALAIN CHANOINE, ALYSON BATH, DEREK GILROY / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Welcome to The Long Pig. A Chinese restaurant that serves a range of cannibalised delights including wontongue soup, special chow brain, kung po flesh and sweet and sour skin, all washed down with a delightfully fresh ‘clot’-tail. While you wait for your meal, why not place a bet on a brutal fight to the death or indulge in some sexual favours from a vast selection of ladies dressed in bloodstained pig masks? Because if it’s sexy you want, farmyard animal is what you get.
Absurd horror gore-fests don’t come much more schizophrenic than Evil Feed. Part horror, part martial arts and part man eating a ‘dicky roll’, it’s a movie based around the mantra of ‘you are what you eat’. Starting out with the owner’s son taking over the family business, we are introduced to his vision of ‘tendertainment’ through the ‘Pit of Gore’, a televised arena where customers watch captured elite fighters duke it out to avoid being diced into an appetiser. When one fighter however turns out to be a member of a much larger martial arts gang, the rest of the group decide to infiltrate the restaurant and save their friends from certain noodle fodder fate.
From there, cartoony characters, outrageous gore, martial arts sequences and clumsy dialogue thrust the movie along a bumpy path of jarring tonal shifts. Ridiculous one-liners and light-hearted splatter humour are interspersed with grim scenes of torture which don’t entirely gel together. It turns into an odd and slightly frustrating experience which jumps between wonderfully silly to overtly serious at the switch of a frame.
It’s unfortunate because when Evil Feed embraces its absurd concept, we see glimmers of the B-movie horror romp it could have been. Standout moments like the ‘house special’ room and the consumption of the aforementioned ‘dicky roll’ are the perfect kind of crazy which will make fans of the genre shriek in joyous disgust. Some of the fighting set-pieces are also well executed and tense, perhaps due to director Kimani Ray Smith’s previous work on stunts for a variety of blockbuster movies including Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
While enjoyable in parts, Evil Feed doesn’t quite live up to its bonkers premise. With too many styles and ideas battling for attention, its brilliantly repulsive moments become a little lost in the mix. Hopefully, a sequel can improve on its blend of sweet and sour and serve up a dish which isn’t so hard to swallow.
