CAUTION: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Dir. Adam Leader & Richard Oakes (2022)
A depressed mind finds himself being convinced to kill himself by a cannibal.
I absolutely loved Dark Fable Media’s Hosts, one of my favorite indie films that I’ve watched this year and a gory as hell thrill ride. Could Leader and Oakes one-up themselves with Feed Me, a film about a man, Jed (Christopher Mulvin), who willingly feeds himself to a cannibal? Neal Ward, who plays the cannibal Lionel Flack with an inexplicable Southern US accent, makes damn sure that this one is leaps and bounds more brutal than that earlier film. Feed Me is also darkly comic, deeply disturbing, and phenomenally well-done (no pun intended), a sad and ominous tale of self-sacrifice and grief.
Feed Me features some truly outstanding visual effects, and with a microbudget of only , what the film achieves is downright extraordinary. The acting is outstanding, with both Ward and Mulvin an absolute joy to watch. The underlying story, of a grieving man who desires only to be reunited with his deceased girlfriend, is heartbreaking, and one can almost understand the lengths to which an anguished man might go to relieve his pain. The cannibal Flack, based on real-life chef de cuisine Armin Meiwes, has desires that are completely abnormal to the world around him but seeks to appease his appetites in just about as responsible a way as possible.
I’ve always viewed the prosecution of Mr. Meiwes, for killing, dismembering, and eating a willing participant, to be a bit unfair, at least the extent to which it was pursued. It never seemed right to me that he would get sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a willing victim when that crime, without the sexual gratification and cannibalism and just the assisted suicide portion of it, would only net five years in a normal case. It’s a prosecution for being abnormal, though to be fair it is certainly a universal abnormality. While there have been several other films made about Meiwes, this is the first I’ve come across that deal with the scenario with a comedic bent, and Feed Me appreciates just how absurdly ridiculous the scenario actually is. It doesn’t treat the subject with kid gloves either, exploring the dark and grotesque realities of killing someone for sustenance.
The movie feels like a gritty, gory horror film somehow directed by the Coen Brothers, each scene crafted with a meticulous eye for detail that lends itself to multiple watches. There’s much more meaning than should be imparted in a film like this, and while the comedy is not often handled in a laugh-out-loud manner, it’s wildly entertaining and much more heartfelt than it has any right to be. Flack’s home is dark, yet charming in its grotesquerie, looking every bit the house of a serial killer yet also somehow feeling like your grandmother’s house from the 80’s. The acting, once again, is phenomenal, and this one is easily one of the best indie horror films I’ve watched this year.
Who this movie is for: Indie horror fans, Cannibal film lovers, Gorehounds
Bottom line: I would say that it was better than expected, except for the fact that I already expected a lot from Dark Fable Media after absolutely loving their earlier film Hosts. This one is dark, disturbing, funny, and heartwarming all at the same time. Neal Ward is stellar as the cannibal Lionel, and he is delightfully unhinged in every scene. This feels like a serial killer film, with a batshit sociopath in the lead role. Definitely recommend that you check this one out at your earliest convenience.
