Feast III: The Happy Finish
Starring: Jenny Wade, Craig Henningson, Martin Klebba, Carl Anthony Payne II, Diane Goldner
Directed By: John Gulager
Written By: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan,
Grade: B

I’m not the biggest fan of the Feast series, but I like the direction it’s going in. For those who enjoyed Feast 2, you will like the 3rd installment just as much if not more. It follows those extreme and somewhat gross kills and that really goofy persona within the horror. It actually elevates this fun tone and gives us a film that continues in the direction that the last one was going in, making it the most entertaining of the series.

The plot is pretty simple and similar to the first two films. The survivors that are still alive wait for help for someone to come save from these creatures that are ripping apart and consuming all of humanity. However, they discover that anyone who could have helped them is already dead. They find Shot Bus Gus, a prophet who has control over these creatures. He ends up saving them and tells them that the way to get out is through the sewers towards the city. So they travel through the sewers in hopes of surviving and along the way meet Jean-Claude Seagal, a karate expert who helps them discover the origins of the creatures, which is called “The Hive”. As they begin to learn more about them they decide to fight them off. If any of them are able to survive, they are looking at a grim lifeless world.

I assume most people who watch Feast III will have watched the first 2, but there really isn’t a need to in order to understand what’s going on here. There is nothing too complex anyway, but the filmmakers did a good job of bringing the audience up to speed without using redundant flashbacks. With every character that comes on screen we get a description of them including their life expectancy rate. We get a little background on all of them and it is clear that the writers had a lot of fun with the descriptions as nearly all of them will at least get you to crack a smile. A lot of these are in the beginning, but it remains to have a natural order and pacing to it without having these all at once. Whenever the character comes on screen is when they introduce them through these descriptions, many which relate to something they have just done or said. In many senses these characters are very generic especially through their names. None of the Feast films are really about the characters though, but they still have fun with them.

There are a lot of dark shots, where we don’t have the full view of what’s going on. I usually hate it in horror films when darkness is replaced with showing deaths and how they actually happen since it is usually the easy way out and far less effective. Here they don’t completely block you out from the visuals though. We actually see both sides of the action it is just an unclear one. Through this we are seeing things closer to the vision of the characters and seems to work a lot better. Through a lot of these dark shots, vibrant colors are placed within these very well for a stylized look.

Feast III continues to stray more away from the first film and accentuates the second’s attributes, especially through the random crazy things. That is really the single thing I like most about the films, which is why I like the ladder two better. I know there are those who liked the first better so they might not like this as much. It really depends on whether you liked the direction the second one went or not. This random wacky direction is what catches my eye though and makes me enjoy the films to an extent. Without this they would just be far too bland and throwaway films. The filmmakers intentionally go against the norm especially with the characters. Many people probably won’t be happy that some of their favorite characters won’t be alive very long. It has kind of become a rule that once a hero is established they have to die. It is a rule that is sure to anger a lot of fans. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t really a fan of the series from the beginning, but I think this actually is a great touch. It works against the norm and does what you wouldn’t expect. I can’t say I really care about the characters either. They really aren’t gone in to that much. I cheer for them to an extent, but I am just as happy seeing their blood shed. There are plenty of bloody deaths including some more grotesque ones. A creatures eats one of the girl’s head and immediately digests of it, having it come out the other end. The body is still alive, moving, and squirting blood where the head used to be until it finally collapses and dies itself. One of the characters sums up another death pretty good in his statement, “Ya’ll literally kicked the shit out of him” when two girls kick a man, covered in blood until he shits himself. This is one of the many examples of the great dialogue in the film. It is almost overly obvious and strays the line between cheesiness and sarcasm, not quite being either one of them. It makes the characters and conversations comic like, but as they are defined on such a small scale this works really well and makes things much more entertaining.

**Spoiler**

The ending of the film was probably my favorite part of the series thus far. One man who is left says, “we gotta repopulate the earth… we gotta start fucking”. Not one second later, his populating partner is smashed and is barely even visible anymore. It has this comical devastation where hope is just laughable. This brings us to the highlight: a Mexican man playing his guitar and singing a hilarious song about the series. The song is extremely blunt and hits on all of the crazy moments in the series with lyrics like, “they’ll eat grandma and babies and have sex with cats”. Many moments have this great irony to them as well and even eludes to the possibility of a film number 4. Personally, I don’t think they can add anything else, it would just be more of the same. It’s Feast III: The Happy Finish, so let’s just let this to be the finishing of the series. Feast III is by no means a great film. It wasn’t thoroughly engaged in every moment, but when the wacky instances were displayed they definitely caught my attention. Feast III: The Happy Finish is a horror film full of meaningless and random unconventional entertainment, but this is really what makes it stands out in the moments that it represents this.