Less short film, more long trailer. That’s not just opinion, either: Rich Robinson’s The Graveyard Feeder started life as a teaser piece, intended to raise funding for a feature film – but was so well received that it has become a short film, shown at several festivals and causing quite the stir among those who have been lucky enough to see it so far.
The premise is simple yet fiendishly clever. Graveyard groundskeeper Burke Sawyer (played by Sean Bridgers of The Woman fame – or notoriety) battles against an unseen underground creature feeding on the bodies of the deceased buried there. Worse: among the deceased is Sawyer’s own father, buried on the grounds. Worse yet: if the creature reaches dad’s dead body, so goes his immortal soul. Worst of all: Pop Sawyer haunts Burke from the afterlife, and boy, does the old coot enjoy the sound of his own voice.
Twelve minutes short but so much sweeter than that, The Graveyard Feeder is frustratingly good. With a Tremors-esque story and action, it has a wonderful atmosphere and writing (even if Bridgers does overdo things a tad, as he did with his evil patriarch in The Woman) – a horror comedy that hooks from the very start.
Alas, the very start is all you’ll be getting until Robinson manages to get his full feature made. It’s over before it ever began, its teaser-y nature meaning that there’s no closure to any of it. Keep your fingers crossed for The Graveyard Feeder movie, then. At barely a morsel, it’ll leave you salivating for more.
THE GRAVEYARD FEEDER / DIRECTOR: RICH ROBINSON / SCREENPLAY: JEFF STEPP, RICH ROBINSON, AARON BECK / STARRING: SEAN BRIDGERS, TOM BARKER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
