Feast3TheHappyFinish

Feast III The Happy Finish (2009)

So this movie picks right up from where the 2nd in the series ended. Our survivors are still trapped on top of the building, monsters surrounding them on all sides. They manage to escape that situation and for the rest of the movie are on the run with the creatures picking them off one at a time. There are several new characters introduced, including a ninja, a deaf profit called Short Bus Gus, and sewer dwelling human cannibals. They are chased from the roof, into a buried meth lab and finally into the sewers beneath the small town (which has a surprisingly large sewer system). Finally just as it seems they might have made their escape the unexpected happens.

Have you ever been at a party and seen that guy trying too hard to be cool? You know the guy I’m talking about. Instead of looking cool he ends up looking like a fool because of the effort he is putting into it. That is what Feast III is for me, a movie that is trying way too hard to be cool and ends up being just annoying. If ever there were a movie that proves tossing “cool” character types together without any idea what the hell you want to do with them doesn’t work it is Feast III The Happy Finish.

I’m not sure what the writers were thinking when they sat down to put this script together because it just doesn’t work. Basically the entire movie is nothing more than the returning characters running around meeting new characters so that they can be killed off. There is no attempt to make any sense here at all. Here in the third movie they introduce what I guess you would call a tribe of cannibal humans that kill and bath or drink the blood of other people. It also seems that the monsters leave these humans alone for some reason. Is this explained at all? No I suppose it was just a good way to explain the bloody chick that likes to slap the characters with a severed penis and has minions to hold them down for said slappage and eventual stabbage. But have no fear because they are save from bloody penis cannibal woman by boy ninja Jean Claude Segall. No I’m not kidding here that is the characters name. Oh and I guess now if the monsters have anal sex with their victims they explode and a little monster/who ever was on the receiving end hybrids. That is another new one on me. Now I’m all for retarded movies okay. Hell I own hundreds of movies that most people would point and laugh at me for owning. But the difference is that those filmmakers weren’t trying to make stupid movies most of the time. This is where I go back and refer to the trying to be cool comments I made earlier. Try to be cool and you look like the fool. Sweet that rhymed. Oh and one more thing before I go. If the ninjas, bloody penis cannibal woman, and hybrid weren’t enough this movie has the biggest F you to fans that I’ve ever seen any movie series end with.

I suppose as bad as the story for the movie is if there had been any attempts at pulling off some decent gore I would have been happy. Unfortunately what we get here are really bad daylight shots (there was a reason the first movie was set at night where you can “hide” the creatures) that show every seam and piss poor detail of the creature designs. What is odd is that since we have already seen how bad the creature’s look there isn’t any reason to hide all the action scenes with the absolute worst shaky camera work that makes understanding what the hell is going on impossible. Really I’m not kidding. There isn’t a single attack that doesn’t get ruined by a camera that appears to have been operated by a 12 year old off his ADD medication. Oh and then they top it with the climatic battle having the shaky camera and strobe lights! Seizure city here I come. To finish with the gore, in addition to terrible looking creatures the gore is handled almost entirely with CGI that is less than stellar and I swear to god body parts that looked like the crap you can buy at Wal-Mart during Halloween. Did this movie have any budget?

One more thing that I have to mention before I wrap things up. None of the characters are carrying a video camera, so there isn’t any Blair Witch or Cloverfield thing going on here. So why then is part of the movie shot on a digital camera using that shitty night vision that turns everything yellow? Not only does it not make any sense with the narrative (what there is of it), but it doesn’t look like the rest of the movie.

I’m a big fan of the monster movies of the 50s and 60s. I know that these movies aren’t meant to be taken seriously and I’m not the kind of guy that expects something like Feast III to be art. But as a fan of creature features I will not accept a filmmaker and writers that want to treat me like I’m retarded either. This movie makes no attempt at a story, tosses “cool” character types together, shows us some boobs, displays the monster’s “franks and beans” to the audience and smiles at us. Guess what guys I’m not drinking the cool aid. You want to half ass your movie then you can stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. If you can’t tell this movie really made me mad. Horror fans need to call out lazy filmmakers that make crap like this for the market and let them know we want quality movies as well. Feast III The Happy Finish jerks around the horror fans so much with it’s complete bullshit story and ending (Spoiler Alert: Screw you Giant Robot!) that it should have been called Feast III The Happy Ending.

½ out of 4 (okay the whole Jean Claude Segall is worth ½ star)

reviewed by John Shatzer