[Review] The Feast (2021): Gore-filled Horror Explores the Destruction of Nature
The Feast is a Welsh-language horror film that revolves around a mythical spirit that infiltrates the home of a politician and his family’s dinner party. The movie dabbles into the consequences of leaning away from tradition and choosing greed, with gore and creepy visuals that bring chills to the viewers. It’s a spectacular slow-burn movie that begins with nature fighting against the people that are drilling the area. One labourer drops to the ground, clutching his ears as he hears a high-pitched noise.
This mystery continues in the rest of the movie as Glenda (Nia Roberts) and Gwyn (Julian Lewis Jones) are preparing for an important dinner and their regular helper is replaced by Cadi (Annes Elwy) at their modern and minimalist home. Gwyn is out shooting rabbits, and when he finds two freshly killed rabbits hung over a tree branch, he claims it was his own. Guto (Steffan Cennydd) spends his time skulking around the house since they dragged him down from London because of his overdose. The other son, Gweirydd (Siôn Alun Davies), is obsessively training for a triathlon and keeping a strange diet.
A foreshadowing of the bloodshed and gore begins as Cadi arrives at the home on the hill. It starts subtly as Guto drops an axe and gashes his foot, Gweirydd cuts his privates as he shaves in the bathtub, Glenda cuts her hand while cutting fruit, and Gwyn hears a high-pitched noise whenever he is near Cadi. No one notices Cadi and her strangeness, or her inefficiency as a helper, especially Glenda. When Cadi arrives at the house, Glenda is upset at her late arrival but doesn’t ask her who she is and why she is wet. Glenda hands a tablecloth to Cadi and asks her to set up the table, but when Cadi hears the shotgun, she is startled. As she tries to hide from the sound, she makes a stain on the cloth with her hands. But Glenda assumes it might be the cleaner’s fault and hands her mother’s old tablecloth to Cadi. This obliviousness from Glenda continues as Cadi sets up the table with mismatched wine glasses. These mishaps, the tablecloth and glassware, are items that are primitive to Glenda, which were once owned by her mother in the farmhouse before they demolished it to build the modern and minimalist house that they currently live in.
Annes Elwy as Cadi. Image courtesy of IFC Films.
The Feast shows the viewer that there is something strange with Cadi. We see a trail of dirt and flies around the kitchen and near the guests are the dinner table wherever she goes. Yet, no one takes the time to process the strangeness of Cadi. Perhaps that is why it makes The Feast even more intriguing when the horror takes place within an isolated space.
We linked the meaning behind the foreshadowing of bloodshed and gore to the destruction of nature that Glenda and Gwyn are planning for the rest of the area. Their home is a trap, a prison where they are punished for their greed and sins against nature. While Glenda explains the meaning behind the abstract painting, which is filled with shapes of the farmland and the area nearby — the sauna that looks like a prison cell — she is completely and utterly oblivious to the terror that befalls her and the family. They are charmed by their luxury and resentments towards Welsh heritage and showing off their home to their guests filled them with a lot of pride. Glenda does not want any item that reminds her of her mother and the farmland that she grew up in. However, the “primitive” tablecloth and glassware is a reminder of just that. As Cadi sings a Welsh song, just like the one that Glenda’s mother used to sing, she continues to haunt the family.
Jones’ directorial debut is a gore-filled horror fest that is centred around the environmental destruction of nature and family that deals with the consequences of it all, and it is one of the most exciting horror movies of the year. The movie documents the debilitating atmosphere of the family as they slowly succumb to the vengeance that awaits them. The Feast is maddening and creative, and the last twenty minutes of the movie brings the mystery to an end. The displays of cruelty and the isolating horror are chilling, but The Feast is elevated with masterful use of horror elements and gorgeous visual imagery.
