THE FEED doesn't have a story. There is no mystery to solve or plot about escaping an inescapable scenario. No, this movie is about the experience. You have to stretch your imagination to the point that you believe that what you are watching is happening live before your very eyes. That is a big stretch. You might as well start believing in flying Luck Dragons. The reason being is that in no way shape or form could anything like this happen. Shouldn't there be like 30 second delays to make sure nothing bad would go across the feed? I don't know too much about cameras or technology but are the small handheld camera's the team are using ill equipped in real life to broadcast live? I'm pretty sure they need more professional cameras. But what do I know? At any time our victims could leave right out the front door. The ending is perplexing. Instead of going "OMG! Ghosts are attacking us! Let's get the heck out of here!" they say "Go down into the basement to turn on the lights so we can get killed in a believable fashion". The last guy alive realizes he is all alone. But instead of going out the front doors next to him he runs down the theater toward the back where he interrupts all these ghosts that are watching some old movie and gets his ass ate!
I like movies like this and I was trying to like this film as hard as this film was trying to create a realistic but spooky atmosphere. The problem is that the movie tries too hard at the beginning to be realistic. Apparently in order to be really realistic you have to be really boring. Near the beginning of THE FEED the leader of the cast shows an "excerpt" from a documentary about the theater that they are investigating. They say excerpt but I swear they play the whole fake documentary to pad out time. Its boring and literally has nothing to do with what is going on in that theater. The documentary fills us in on information that is repeated over and over again throughout the film making the documentary portion of the film poorly acted filler. Since THE FEED is about watching t.v. we get to see commercials in our movie too. They aren't real commercials but they aren't funny either. They are meant to be taken as real. At first I thought this was kind of a cool idea and it does play into the spookiness of the film when the commercial break is prematurely interrupted for no explainable reason. But then I thought to myself "Isn't the whole reason I buy DVDs is to not have commercials in my movies?" Screw you, THE FEED! The commercial breaks get in the way. Again they seem more like padding to draw out film's run time.
You know all those people who hate the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or PARANORMAL ACTIVITY because they don't show much? Well maybe they would like THE FEED. This movie shows everything. THE FEED is a great example as to why you don't show the ghosts. They don't look real. The moment you see the first ghost you immediately lose your belief in what is happening. The GHOST CHASERS capture a residual haunting of a woman falling down some stairs. The effects are poor and laughable. Its a bad actress green screened onto a freeze frame photo of a stairwell. Its bad and it sets the "I can't take any of this seriously" tone for the rest of the film. For a low budget movie THE FEED is pretty heavy on the special effects at the end. At the end they encounter a spider chick ghost thing in the attic of the theater just as the GHOST CHASERS only female member is somewhere else getting pulled by an invisible force into a room. Yea, they do the whole "PARANORMAL ACTIVITY being pulled from the bed by an invisible demon" gag. The spider lady looks fake and they make sure to get the camera right in her face so we can see the horrible special effects.
I don't know if these ghosts have anything to do with the history of the theater. The fake documentary shows the original theater owner as a wonderful guy who loves children but the GHOST CHASERS with the help of a psychic discover (Oh, I guess there is some mystery to be solved. My bad.) that he was a pedophile. He burns up in a fire that happened at the theater. So maybe he is a ghost. But then this family is murdered in the basement. Who killed them? His ghost? The spider lady ghost? Who is she? I'm confused. I am not sure what the movie is trying to say about who the ghosts are. I need to watch this movie again to see if I missed something. Yea, like that is going to happen.
Actually there are a few confusing moments in THE FEED. At one point the GHOST CHASERS are split into two groups. As they are investigating the theater they both try to open a door. They don't know that the other group is on the other side of this door. They keep trying to open it but they stop because they keep hearing something not knowing it is only the other group on the other side of the door. This is a weird moment in the film because it goes nowhere and they kind of walk away or something happens to take their attention away from the door. I don't recall but the way this moment is handled just left me questioning if there was any point to what just happened. Was it for the sake of comedy? Where they really on opposite sides of that door? Is there some spooky significance to the door? Later the door opens and pulls the girl inside. Also there is a tech guy that is outside monitoring the events in the theater who adds music and sound effects to dramatize the show. He tries to save the last guy at the end by going all the way to the back of the theater and reaching his hand out over a fence as the last guy opens the door and tries to escape. Why didn't he just go through the front doors the second the bad stuff started to happen? I think his van is parked outside the front doors. This whole movie doesn't make any sense. The fact that this theater is in the middle of a town and not in the middle of nowhere where help can't be reached just makes everyone look really stupid for dying.
THE FEED isn't scary, creepy or frightful. There are too many special effects and none of them work. This movie needed to embrace its low budget instead of being bigger than it's means. I liked what they were going for but it just didn't work this time. Have you ever noticed with shows like GHOST HUNTERS that not much happens? It's just people walking around filmed in nightvision with blank expressionless faces. THE FEED is basically the same with more holes in the concept. Now enough about THE FEED. Let's talk about my awesome idea for a ghost investigating show. My idea is to have a show about a group of twenty somethings led by a couple of late thirty somethings who look for ghosts in old or historic homes, prisons or other things that have ghosts in them. Here is where my show is different from all the others. When they see a ghost they have to "get" them. That's it. Just "get" them. That is their whole plan. Just "get" them. It will be called THE GHOST GETTERERS! What do you think?...................................Yea? Well, who asked you?
Jason
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