It happens to most horror films – in fact, you could even go so far as to argue it happens to all horror films. A horror film bursts into the screen with kinetic wonder and fresh intensity, but its sequels are lost in a flood of gore and mediocrity. Now it’s happening to Feast.

You might remember Feast as the final product of Project Greenlight’s last season. Like most of Project Greenlight’s projects, it was another DVD for the bargain bin, but ultimately, Feast did accomplish one end – it was a damn good horror film, and warranted a sequel. Unfortunately, this isn’t that movie.

Sixteen hours after the first movie’s bar-side attack, the vengeful Biker Queen (Diane Goldner) is looking for Bozo, the survivor of the first film who inadvertently sacrificed her sister’s life so he and the others could escape. With the help of another survivor – the Bartender (Clu Gulager), left for dead in the first movie – she aims to track Bozo down in the neighboring town. Unbeknown her, however, the same monsters now run rampant in the town and soon the Biker Queen and her crew are thrown into a fight for their lives with the town’s few survivors, including a car salesman (Carl Anthony Payne II), his cheating wife Secrets (Hanna Putnam), her positive-thinking boyfriend Greg (Tom Gulager), a tag team of midget wrestlers (Martin Klebba and Juan Longoria Garcia) and Honey Pie (Jenny Wade), the treacherous waitress from the last movie.

This is a visually diverse and eclectic cast, and there are quite a few high notes among them. In particular, Clu Gulager, underused in the first film, embodies the wounded but wry Bartender perfectly in this film. Diane Goldner’s Biker Queen does a great job propelling the plot forward through her character’s single-minded quest for vengeance even if the character is lost in the shuffle towards the end of the film. And midget wrestler Martin Klebba is probably the best actor on screen – making excellent use of ample attitude and one-liners throughout the film.

There are many ways this recipe for horror turned recipe for disaster, but let’s start with the monsters. In the first time, they were new and terrifying beasts clad in cloaks of roadkill and desert. Now, the monsters run around in broad daylight looking like typical B-Movie fare instead of once proud cult classics. One monster is even pointlessly dissected in the film, and succeeds in pointlessly menacing the cast through flesh-eating vomit and urine. It’s as if everything that made the monsters horrific in the first film has been stripped down to their base vulgarities over the course of the movie.

The film is also so incredibly violent that it almost squanders any good will from the audience in the first five minutes, when a dog is mercilessly blown apart. Characters die in excruciatingly cruel and gory ways, but there is little suspense to each death and hardly any artistry. Even the nihilism of the film is undercut as the sequel begins essentially recycling deaths from the last movie in more than a couple ways. As favorite characters inexplicably die without so much of a chance, the flick soon crosses from nihilistic to entirely monotonous.

The first Feast was a movie which beats the odds. It introduced as to a cast of horror movie staples with the odds against them historically high throughout the genre – but then crafted a ragtag team’s ride into ultimate survival. But there is very little survival in Feast II and practically no resolution. The first Feast may have been a glorious Thanksgiving dinner for horror fans, but the second film is no more than the moldy green leftovers found in the fridge a couple weeks later.

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4. 30 Days of Night In October
5. Silent Hill

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