#feed 2005

Ohio version:

omg anon you have no idea how much I have discussed that film in group chat 

Anyway, Denise would TOTALLY make both her kids watch that to scare them straight. I already have a headcanon that she makes her kids watch documentaries about Prader-Willi syndrome to scare them (and before someone chimes in that that’s ableist of her--I KNOW IT IS. DENISE IS THE VILLAIN. YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO HATE HER AND ROOT FOR HER DEATH). And of course she won’t let them just sit around while they watch the video so she makes them run on the treadmill at the same time. (tagging pottersgal71 and imisskittyx in case you want to be in the loop about what your crazy mum has done this time) 

But yeah, Denise without a doubt would, to scare them into thinking feedism is this Horrible Terrible Deadly Horror Movie Thing, but her message would probably backfire. Because think about it. 

The feeder dude in the movie is a psycho...but the cop is also a douche. 

Who are the ONLY two sympathetic characters in this film? 

Deidre, and Michael’s sister. 

Well guess what? They are both fat. 

(Denise wouldn’t see it that way because she wouldn’t see their characters as human, but Denise is trash so...) 

I'm getting tired of going back and editing the master list every time so okay. Again these are just so I have them so that I remember how I felt about the movie so I can make a decent review video later on. 

Feed (2005)

Hot chicory, people! Have you seen the film 'Slither'? Because, by crikey, I think we may have a work of revolting genius on our hands here. Y'see, a couple of blogs back, I took a few potshots at the film 'Feed', a shit and pointless film by a shit and pointless film company for a theoretical audience of staggering dunderpates so immensely stupid, it's hard to imagine that they actually exist in real life. My attention was first drawn to because of its misrepresentation of feeders and feederism, but then I realised that there was a better reason to hate it: it was boring and that's one thing a horror movie/ thriller should never be.

Which brings me to Slither, a film so repulsive, sickening and disturbing that if you make it to the end without throwing up, it'll be an achievement. It's the exact opposite of 'Feed' in that it amounts to a masterclass in How to Do Body Horror Right. Take that as praise, by the way. Slither is a film so thoroughly wrong on so many levels that I can't even talk about it any further without lobbing up a trigger warning:

TRIGGER WARNING: Rape; violations of the human body that they don't even have a name for; sexually transmitted diseases. Oh, and also 'Vore'.

So, anyway, 'Slither' is, on the surface of things, a pretty standard Rob-Zombie-Meets-David-Chronenburg-with-monster-design-by-H.R.-Geiger flick that can be summed up as belonging to an odd little subgenre within horror films best dubbed 'Rednecks-Versus-Monsters'. In this case, our monster is an alien invader of a unique kind, and the way it operates means that some proper critics have chosen to see the film as an extended metaphor for the aides pandemic.

Y'see, the eponymous creature is basically a sentient disease. It takes over one central person's body, uses that person to forcibly impregnate another human with slithering, slimy worm-monsters (that look like phalluses, and I suspect that's not a coincidence, given what else happens in this flick), which then go and force their way inside human being's bodies, turning them into mindless slaves who (spoiler warning) will then return to the original host and merge with them into a horrendous, physically repellent superorganism. And if just reading this made you feel uncomfortable, then you should try watching it: it manages to be even more gross than I make it sound. Essentially, each stage of the alien life-form's entire life-cycle bears a sickly and warped resemblance to something that happens (or really, really shouldn't happen) in human sex. I'm not sure the film is trying to 'say' anything, but it understands human psychology well enough to lean heavily on all the levers that will make the viewer feel most emotionally vulnerable and tense. And that makes it work as a body-horror film. It does what 'Feed', a supposedly more 'realistic' body-horror film failed to do by actually exploiting latent fears about what might happen to our bodies and at whose hands, as well as concerns over how much our biological drives control us... as oppose to, y'know, just going for the "ew gross" factor.

There's also a more direct comparison that can be made with the film 'Feed', but even typing about it is going to make me feel like going for a little lie down and some deep-breathing exercises to get the nausea under control. You see, there are scenes in 'Slither' that use some of the same ideas that crop up in feederism erotic fiction, but in drastically different and warped ways. I'm not going to give too much away (more because I don't want to type than because you don't want to read it), but there are female characters under the alien influence who are subject to the kind of insatiability (and even use the same sort of phrases) that appear in the aforementioned fictions, only with the element of this hunger being for flesh- usually human flesh. In and of itself, that's not much different from the standard 'braaaaiiins' schtick from a zombie movie, but coupled with the films weird and warped sexual themes and the fact that the characters actually retain a functioning human consciousness while being overcome by these, er, 'desires', this additional element should add an extra layer of discomfort for anyone who even knows what feederism or even Vore is (for your own sake, I urge you not to Google that last one- I know some of you are already well into that shit, and that's fine, but the rest of you are probably happier not knowing). What makes it so effective is that, even though I'm not sure the film-makers knew about those things, those sequences serve to expose the dark underbelly and more grim and tragic implications of those fetishes without actually dismissing those who practice them outright, in the same way that the film drags rape, STDs and needless sexual disloyalty into stark relief and forces the viewer to take a good hard look at them without stigmatizing sex itself. It's uncomfortable viewing, and about as gory as it gets, but I can't fault it when it comes to thematic subtlety. Body horror films like 'Feed' or even the hilariously, pointlessly bad 'Human Centipede' might not be able to learn from the film's alien/monster angle, but they could certainly take a schooling about the art of making a decent film from it.

And, if I was proper film critic, this is the part where I'd have to say if I enjoyed 'Slither' or not... so it's lucky I'm not a proper film critic. Y'see, I'm not really sure if 'enjoy' is the right criteria to judge Slither on: it's a deeply sick movie about problematic issues wrapped up in the trappings of a camp B-movie monster flick. Sure, you might find the former interesting and the latter entertaining, and both of those things are a form of enjoyment, but if 'I enjoyed that' is the overwhelming impression you got from the film, then it kind of begs the question "what the fuck is wrong with you?" It's not meant to be simply enjoyed: it's meant to register with the same part of your brain for which the phrase 'morbid fascination' was invented.