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 eed"
marks somewhat of a change in direction for Brett
Leonard, whose last outing was the ridiculous
comic book adaptation "Man-Thing".
Although the director has dealt with the perils of
technology before in the likes of
"Virtuosity" and "The Lawnmower
Man", here he takes a far more grounded and
less fantastic approach, aiming for shocks by
exploring how the Internet allows people to play
out some of their more grotesque and perverse
desires.
The plot follows Phillip
(Patrick Thompson, also in "Man-Thing"),
an Australian internet policeman who becomes
obsessed with proving that there is something
sinister behind a website which features grossly
overweight women being force-fed by apparently
loving captors. His search drags him into the
fetishistic subculture of feeders and gainers, an
extreme and dangerous form of sub-dom, and leads
him to website owner Michael Carter (Alex
O'Loughlin, another Australian and fellow
"Man-Thing" refugee), a quite obviously
disturbed young man with a mysterious past. Taking
matters into his own hands, the detective tracks
Michael to suburban
America
, but finds himself not only facing off against a
colossal pervert but the ugly truth about his own
yearnings.
"Feed" has a
conventional and unadventurous narrative, and
indeed the script is probably the film's weakest
element, with much of Phillip's investigation
proceeding as a result of shabby incompetence on
the part of his quarry. The characters are
similarly undeveloped, with psycho Michael acting
as little more than a mouthpiece for
cod-philosophical mutterings along the lines of
'consumption is evolution', and Phillip being a
rather two dimensional ball of tightly woven
neurosis.
Still, the subject matter is
morbidly fascinating, enough so to keep the viewer
hooked, and Leonard does manage to throw in a few
effective twists along the way, making for a
fairly tense experience for most of the running
time, though the final scenes sadly degenerate
into the usual gun pointing and hysterical
shouting. The final twist is gruesomely amusing in
a "Tales from the Crypt" sort of way,
though it has quite obviously been tacked on for
effect rather than narrative logic.
The film is genuinely
perverse throughout, packed with nudity and
deviant sex, most of it in the form of scenes of
masturbation and intercourse featuring horribly
obese women (most of whom are actually actresses
wearing wholly convincing fat suits). There are a
few brief splatters of gore and violence towards
the end, though most of the film's nastiness comes
through its frequent scenes of flying fat and
vomit, a good deal of which is truly nauseating.
As such, the whole affair has
the queasy air of a freak show, though to be fair,
Leonard clearly employs the material as a direct
challenge to the viewer's own prejudices and as a
tool for exploring notions of societal acceptance
and hypocrisy, and of the fine line between abuse
and consent. Unfortunately, the film's
intellectual leanings are undermined by Michael's
ranting and slogan-shouting, which takes it more
into traditional psycho-thriller territory rather
than the searching study of the eccentricities and
extremities of desire which it could have been
Leonard shoots
"Feed" on mobile HD, giving things an
intimate, realistic look and making the viewer
feel uncomfortably voyeuristic. Unfortunately, the
resulting claustrophobia is frequently interrupted
by the director's tendency to throw in flashy
editing and music video style jump cuts, most of
which are entirely out of place. The soundtrack
itself is similarly inappropriate, being made up
of wacky old songs which contain less than subtle
references to food, and the usual pounding techno
rock.
The end result is a somewhat unsubtle, though
effectively tense and repulsive thriller which
marks Brett Leonard of being capable of far more
interesting things than his back catalogue would
suggest.
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