Film Review: THE FEAST: Palatable Environmentalist Folk Horror With a Delectable Dessert of a Finale [SXSW 2021]

The Feast Review

The Feast (2021) Film Review from the 28th Annual South By Southwest Film Festival, a movie directed by Lee Haven Jones, and starring Caroline Berry, Steffan Cennydd, Sion Alun Davies, Annes Elwy, Julian Lewis Jones, Rhodri Meilir, Lisa Palfrey, and Nia Roberts.

Mother Nature and humanity exist in a tempestuous balance; she provides for you, but you must act as her caretaker. She can give and give and give, but without reciprocation something else will have to give instead. Which is all to hammer home the basic point: human greed has dire consequences. (**side-eyes the entire past 12 months**)

Such is a core conflict of all great folk horror, and such conflict is at the heart of Lee Haven Jones’ feature debut, The Feast, wherein insatiable social status is pitted against the elements in a delectably drawn-out battle.

Set in the Welsh countryside at an elaborate stone manor, Glenda (Nia Roberts) – wife to U.K. Parliament member Gwyn (Julian Lewis Jones) – prepares a bountiful feast for neighbors and business connections alike. While Glenda toils and Gwyn gets drunk while bragging about his marksmanship (which was really just killing two rabbits that were already in a trap), their adult son and former junkie Guto (Steffan Cennydd) broods in the den about his lost independence in London. Their other adult son, the eerie and intense Gweirydd (Sion Alun Davies), is icily distant as he obsesses over his triathlon training in lieu of his doctoral practice. The family buries their past traumas and regrets in money and influence, and the need to be a tight-knit unit is no longer a necessity.

To help with the party Glenda sends for Cadi (Annes Elwy), a local bartender with a cool and almost catatonic air. Her naïvete slows things down, but as Glenda is too concerned with the evening at-large she barely takes notice. In fact, every family member becomes drawn to Cadi for various reasons as the night goes on, wanting to use her as a personal escape from their obligations. The more time that passes the more Cadi begins to open up, but in doing so reveals her grungy intentions which are far from what a hospitality role would suggest.

Admittedly, The Feast’s first few bites are pretty dry. There’s enough clever close-ups, shadowy interiors, earthy tones, and clever cuts in sound and image to conjure up enough creepiness to fuel the next couple years’ worth of indie horror alone (Veronika Franz, Severin Fiala, and Ari Aster must be green with envy right now). Jones makes it evident that something strange is going to happen, but the teasing is in such a droll manner that it’s hard not to fidget with impatience.

But when that “something strange” finally does happen, it’s impossible to pump the brakes. Jones plunges full-speed ahead into a gnarly pit of supernatural-tinged carnage, with enough squirm-inducing shots to make your mouth hang agape in stupefied awe. By the time the film finally cuts to black, The Feast has injected you with too much adrenaline to allow you to slow down.

Its personifications, granted, can be a bit on-the-nose, from environmental destruction to corporate consumption to basic sociopathic greed. However, Jones and screenwriter Roger Williams use the extremity of The Feast’s finale to reinforce their conception of humanity’s burgeoning disconnect – not just from each other, but from their own history and the land which raised them. It’s as much a condemnation on modern-day consumerism and vapid gestures of status as it is a plea to respect the past (so far as doing so will allow for both a greater understanding and appreciation of the present). Like the looming environmental crisis on all of our hands will soon lay bare (that is, if it hasn’t been laid bare already), the misanthropic complexities of capitalist greed will be undone by the simple tenacity of Nature herself.

The Feast is less of a slow burn as it is a slow rot, slowly peeling back the putrid façade of innovation to reveal a festering disdain for our own survival. Despite its first courses being merely digestible, sticking it out for finale will allow you a delicious dessert.

Rating: 6/10

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