Horror and folklore have at all times gone hand-in-bloodied-hand. Individuals making an attempt to make sense of a complicated, chaotic pure world with darkly whimsical tales was one of many earliest types of storytelling, and the traditional traditions of Celtic folklore specifically are what director Lee Haven Jones and author Roger Williams mine in The Feast, their function debut. Like The Wicker Man, or newer efforts like Males, this intense little movie takes an idyllic pastoral setting and contrasts it towards a spot of violent eco-horror, making a quiet however fierce warning about disrupting the pure order.
It takes its time getting there, although. The primary hour is languid and nearly laborious, establishing a curious temper through static camerawork and a few foreboding tranquillity. We’re someplace within the Welsh countryside, on the palatial nation pad of an area politician internet hosting a slap-up meal as a way to provide up some land for oil-drilling rights. The home is hardly in line with the native aesthetic — all floor-to-ceiling glass and Scandinavian modernism — and there’s a component of sophistication pressure in how obnoxiously it sits in a working-class neighborhood.
The dysfunctional ensemble that occupies this home features a slick-talking MP (Julian Lewis Jones), who could also be protecting a couple of secrets and techniques to himself; his extremely strung spouse (Nia Roberts), whose consideration to element is paramount (“Are you aware how a lot effort goes into making a pavlova?” she mutters at one level); and their two sons (Steffan Cennydd and Sion Alun Davies), a drug addict and an obsessive triathlete respectively.
The denouement is bloody, resulting in a closing act that is hardly refined, however satisfyingly wild, swerving all of the sudden into the quick lane.
After which there’s Cadi, an area lady from the village employed to assist out with the meal, and carried out by Annes Elwy with a fantastically hypnotic oddness. It’s evident instantly that one thing will not be proper along with her; precisely what will not be revealed till the very finish.
Carried out fully within the Welsh language — which supplies the impact, subtly, of connecting the story with its Celtic traditions — it’s not fully clear the place it’s going at first. Some eye-catching imagery — Cadi voyeuristically watches a unadorned man shave his pubes, and there’s a jaw-dropping second involving damaged glass in an intimate area — provides you a superb trace. If the viewing expertise can typically be irritating, playing cards held too near the chest at occasions, the flashes of visible flourish are sufficient to keep up curiosity.
Naturally, the denouement is bloody, all resulting in a closing act that’s hardly refined, however satisfyingly wild, swerving all of the sudden into the quick lane. If it could be too unusual or eccentric for some viewers, there’s a clear-minded understanding of the themes at hand right here, and an historic custom being tapped into: respect the pure order, otherwise you’ll spoil your supper.
