Feed the Gods Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

Feed the Gods Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 5, 2021

Thomas Wolfe helped to popularize the phrase "you can't go home again" courtesy of the title of one of his best remembered novels, but some hearing that sentiment might respond with, "Why would you ever want to?" Going "home" again is at the core of the intermittently engaging Feed the Gods, which begins with a desperate mother with two tagalong young 'uns trying to get out of a place called Tendale. There's a red line on the pavement denoting where the end of the city (really more of a village) is, and evidently tickets are needed to exit. The woman only has two, and so a helpful older lady agrees to take the kids and trundles off in a truck with them (with another character whose function is unexplained other than to be threatening to the scared mom). The woman, now alone, then steps over the red line, at which point huge, thundering "thuds" are heard. Pre-credits intrigue established? Check. Unfortunately, what happens after the credits turns out to be an often derivative affair that sees the two tots, now grown into adult brothers Will (Shawn Roberts) and Kris (Tyler Johnston) dealing with the death of the woman who saved them and who acted as their foster mother. Kris' girlfriend Brit (Emily Tennant) is also on hand, attempting to navigate the sometimes perilous interactions between the siblings. When an old VHS tape labeled Casablanca is found among their foster mother's belongings, Will takes it on himself to find a VCR and play it, where it (of course) turns out not to be the Humphrey Bogart - Ingrid Bergman classic, but instead a "home video" of sorts documenting something involving tickets at a gathering in Tendale. Some quick action on the remote pause button allows the kids to spy what they think might be their biological parents, and Will decides the trio should head off to Tendale to do a little genealogical research (so to speak), especially since the town has an annual Sasquatch sighting event. If you can't put the rest of the pieces of this puzzle together, you might want to re-enroll in your local Syd Field screenwriting course.

There's a kind of odd tonal inconsistency at play in Feed the Gods, and my hunch is if some chose to watch the film with the sound off, at least certain moments might look like the film is a comedy. And in fact there seem to be some deliberate ploys to extract a few giggles from the audience at various times, mostly in terms of the sibling skirmishes between Will and Kris. This aspect is especially evident in Roberts' performance, where he comes off as an overly muscled lunkhead with a fondness for weed and naked women, but the screenplay by Braden Croft (who also directed) doesn't ever fully capitalize on this element. And in fact, I think Feed the Gods might have been a good deal more successful had it been structured as an all out "horror comedy", since there are so many patently ludicrous plot mechanics.

Of course the trio does get to Tendale, or at least its outskirts, where they're put up in a bed and breakfast by a helpful local named Emma (Britt Irvin). When the newly established quartet gets into the city (village) limits, they find a largely closed up town with taciturn residents unwilling to have much to do with the interlopers, and with several doorposts smeared with what looks like blood, as if a lost tribe of Jews had somehow ended up in rural America and was reenacting Pesach rituals for some reason. Of course, there is a reason, but the film struggles to finally "get there", in terms of the expected "monster reveal", which does at least feature some fun makeup effects.

Part of the issue here is that the whole "town with a horrifying secret" aspect is so overly convoluted in this case that the film might have offered more clarity with either a lot more explanation or, frankly, a total lack of it (audiences will often just "go with the flow" if that's the only option available to them). But the "reasoning" of the townspeople and some of the (brief) history outlined simply come off as contrived and, ultimately, kind of ridiculous. The film's post-monster coda is also kind of an exercise in futility, with a couple of "stings" that I don't think are clear enough to actually pay off.

Still, for such a low budgeted indie affair, Feed the Gods boasts rather considerable technical competency, and the performances are uniformly winning. The film doesn't offer much in the way of surprises, or even scares, though, again, there are some lunatic moments in the second half of the film that are undeniably comic simply because things get so chaotic as the townspeople decide that Will, Kris and Brit might make an appealing "snack" for the local Bigfoot.

Feed the Gods Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Feed the Gods is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of the MVD Marquee Collection, an imprint of MVD Visual, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. There's no authoritative technical data on the shoot that I could find online, but Braden Croft and Travis Shewchuk mention Red cameras in a supplement on the disc, though I'm uncertain if the DI was finished at 2K or 4K (the filming era of 2012-13, as discussed in some supplements, leads me to believe it was 2K). One of the interesting things about this presentation is disclosed right off the bat in the commentary, where Croft and Shewchuk mention that this version is "two stops too dark", though I'm uncertain whether they are referring to the presentation as a whole or simply the opening sequence. One way or the other, aside from a bit of murkiness in the "really" dark sequences, as in Will foraging around in forests and/or caves, the palette pops very well and detail levels are generally consistently high. Fine detail in close-ups is often excellent. One of the conceits of the film is that when Will is looking for a VCR, he finds an old style minicam and starts documenting things, and then later it turns out just about everyone in Tendale is video recording various events, so there are some cutaways to supposed "home movies" that are intentionally fuzzy looking, as can be seen in some of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review.

Feed the Gods Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Feed the Gods features DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 tracks, and if there's not a whale (or Bigfoot) of a lot difference between the two, both provide excellent fidelity and some appealing low end (especially in the surround track). There's decent engagement of the side and rear channels in the many outdoor scenes, especially once the focal trio starts getting "out and about" to try to figure out what's going on in Tendale. A boisterous and "thumpy" score also sounds fine. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout the presentation. Optional English subtitles are available.

Feed the Gods Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer / Director Braden Croft and Associate Producer Travis Shewchuk can be accessed under the Setup Menu.


• Feed the Gods Behind the Scenes Featurette (HD; 13:02) features Croft and Shewchuk again discussing the film, with some interstitial candid footage included.


• Trailers includes Feed the Gods (HD; 1:17), along with trailers for other releases from MVD Visual.

The keepcase insert also features reversible artwork.

Feed the Gods Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The back cover of this release states that Braden Croft made Feed the Gods with a "nod to Sam Raimi's early films", and in that regard some may feel that Croft would have done better to have gone completely gonzo with the character of Will and Roberts' performance in the same way that Raimi got Bruce Campbell to deliver the hyperbolic goods in The Evil Dead. If Feed the Gods had just been a bit more consistently funny I think it probably would have registered more effectively, but as it stands, the humor almost seems like an afterthought at times, and there's simply not enough "fear factor" to sustain the film as a traditional horror enterprise. Technical merits are solid and the supplements interesting, for those who are considering making a purchase.