Father Son Holy Gore

Feed the Gods. 2014. Dir. Braden Croft.
Starring Shawn Roberts, Emily Tennant, Britt Irvin, Tyler Johnston, and Aleks Paunovic. Compound B.
Unrated. 84 minutes.
Horror/Thriller

★1/2

There are times I’ll admit I am fooled by an interesting title. When I first heard of Feed the Gods I’ve got to say, I was absolutely hooked. Just by the title alone. So I waited, and finally it came to VOD. I wasn’t particularly aware this film had anything to do with Bigfoot, or a Bigfoot type legendary creature, until the poster art showed up. Maybe I’m not in the loop (I know I’m not in the loop – that’s called a joke), but going by the description I basically imagined a sort of strange backwoods cult. It made me think of something similar to Jug Face, which is a great modern backwoods horror. However, this is nothing like that great film. Unfortunately, I can’t really say much positive about Feed the Gods.

The premise of the film isn’t a bad one. Two brothers, who don’t really like one another, decide to seek out their birth parents after the death of their adopted mother. It brings them to a mountain-woods town. The locals are a bit strange, a bit quirky. And also there’s the running legend about a Bigfoot creature in the forest. They call it The Wild Man. The Wild Man takes people, they say. Not a bad setup.

I’m not really saying the plot isn’t great because I was really intrigued by what might happen. It’s just that there wasn’t any fear.
Usually Bigfoot freaks me out. Some recent sasquatch centric movies I’ve enjoyed and found creepy are Willow Creek, and most recently the brilliantly executed Exists by found footage master Eduardo Sanchez. Feed the Gods aims to be a really unique movie in the Bigfoot filmography, but fails.
The acting wasn’t awful, at least not to a point where I cringed; though one or two times at the beginning I did wince slightly. Regardless, a few times I actually chuckled at a bit of the humour weaved in. The biggest problem Feed the Gods suffers from is a lack of any real dread, no suspense or tension. They aim to give that backwoods feeling of terror. The town in which the main characters end up almost has a feeling similar to when the boys first show up in Deliverance to try and find someone to drive their vehicle; they wander into such a funny yet creepy, eerie place with the kid and his banjo. I almost expected a scene close to it, but they didn’t go too hamfisted here. Yet there wasn’t enough of anything.

Feed the Gods is a confused film a lot of its running time. There are points, as I said, where I did laugh, but those were essentially in part because of one of the brothers who worked as comic relief. Even at the end, I didn’t expect it to end. Things came to a close so abruptly.  I felt like there was going to be a bit more resolution. Not because I need it – I love when a film, horror especially, can leave things either ambiguous or just plain depressing even – but because it felt as if the film was moving towards some resolution. I’m not saying it’s meant to be a good one. The finale really blew things.
On that note, I did not dig the monster in this film. Near the end there’s a really bad shot. Kudos to the filmmakers for going with their own sort of unique look. Wasn’t my thing. I didn’t find it too frightening, at all. That also had to do with the entire film. A sense of dread and fear comes along with a sasquatch type creature lurking in the woods. Unfortunately for Feed the Gods, and me I guess, I did not have that at all here. So when there’s some real screen time for this creature it just didn’t affect me much. As opposed to a film like Sanchez’s Exists, which in my opinion had one of the best Bigfoots on film. Period. This film did right by not going for too many shots of the creature head-on, however, when they do go for it the creature only disappoints.
All in all this is just a rough film. I respect trying to take a new look at the whole Bigfoot idea, and sort of zooming in on a more local legend aspect, but this does not work. The writing isn’t especially good. Not that I’d consider it horrible – I love the story itself. The plot wound up coming across boring when it could’ve been so much more with increased suspense and tension. The acting isn’t awful. It’s wooden, though, and this helps nothing. I did enjoy the older brother, played by Shawn Roberts; he was funny at times, others he was believable. Most of the other characters were either overplayed or just poorly done. He seemed like the only one with an actual personality.

Also, another little thing I didn’t like was the trailer – it is badly cut. I know the difference because I’ve watched the film, but I know a couple people already who’ve mentioned to me they assumed the three main characters were brothers and sister. That’s because the trailer is cut in the beginning with a line from Will (Roberts) stating “we want to go find mom and dad”, or something similar. There’s nothing else in the trailer to indicate the girl of the trio is not a relative; she’s in fact the girlfriend of Will’s younger brother. Nothing to get upset over. You discover quick enough once turning on the film they’re in a relationship together. This is an instance of pure laziness. Careless and sloppy to have a shoddy trailer, which has clearly confused more than a couple people after starting to watch this. It doesn’t ruin anything, but it sort of makes you wonder why they’d cut a trailer that way. The least they could’ve done is make sure the trailer was tight. Because the writing isn’t, and it falls apart basically after the premise gets into place.
I can only give this 1.5 stars out of 5.
I don’t mean to hate on the film. Like I mentioned, I really loved the whole setup. There was a lot of promise in the story for the film, but unfortunately this didn’t extend into the plot and any of the rest of the film. You can’t even really call this a horror, as far as I’m concerned. I would mostly throw this into the category of a dark thriller.

I always try to give Bigfoot movies some breathing room, so to speak, because it isn’t easy to effectively do one right. I can’t extend much courtesy to Feed the Gods. It really let me down in the end. I didn’t even initially realize this was a film concerning Bigfoot. Once I realized it was, though, I got excited. Recently I saw Late Phases, which really came off as a great modern werewolf horror, and as far as werewolves go it’s hard for me to find a movie with their kind in it I really love; I loved that one, and it really did good for the genre in a fresh way. I hoped then that Feed the Gods might be capable of doing the same sort of thing with Bigfoot. I hoped in vain. That being said, I would like to see Braden Croft write and direct another feature because he has great ideas floating around.
Check this out if you have some time to kill, but don’t expect much, and don’t waste your money if there’s something else looking more promising in the VOD queue.