Feast

 A lad's movie if there ever was one, Feast pits a bunch of yahoo caricatures stuck in a gritty southern bar under siege by toothsome, man-eating, sex pest monsters that kind of look like flayed versions of Marvel's Venom. It's proudly loud and crass, wildly exploitative, and it's directed like shit; And by some miracle, it's actually kind of enjoyable.

 This is the sort of film where you don't just get a freeze frame introduction for each character, they also get a short bio with some obnoxious, winking joke. Everyone gets an "Life Expectancy" entry, for example, but asides from a fun moment early on, most of the jokes are terrible.

 The style is purposefully abrasive, which is a shame because a couple of shots at the beginning are reasonably stylish and set me up to expect more from the film. As for the tone... this is one of those movies that shamelessly chases a would-be smartass, hyper-exaggerated version of early Tarantino and applies it with a self-congratulatory, frat-boy mentality. More Boondock Saints than Pulp Fiction, in other words. I have nothing against this sort of thing, but it's got to have more going for it than just attitude.

 Shock takes the lion's share of the film's comedy - those life expectancy blurbs, for example, are mostly there to be subverted as their owners go on to meet a messy, sometimes inappropriate deaths. There's a lot of sexual exploitation (which is more than a little bit iffy, seeing as this comes from the house of Weinstein*) but I have to admit an incident of face-fucking is so over-the-top and cruel it had the intended effect of provoking a disbelieving laugh.
 The gore and practical monster effects are excellent, but this is where I ran into my biggest problem with the film: You really don't get to see much of them. Whenever there's even a tiny bit of action, director John Gulager makes it his mission to make it as incomprehensible as possible. Shaky cam was all the rage in the '00s, but it goes into overdrive here, making most of the most promising scenes here devolve into a maddening, headache-inducing mess. This has its place in proper horror (Splinter, which came out a few years later is a good example) - but it has no place in action, or in a movie like this that's intended to showcase its splatter.

 Dumb as it is, the script (by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan) does slow down a little bit and gets some clever jabs in. The film is peopled by shallow stereotypes (it seems clear neither Melton nor Dunstan have ever set foot in the sort of dive they're portraying), but some decent acting by the likes of Henry Rollins, Clu Gulager (the director's father) gives them at least an illusion of depth.

This, sadly, is about as clever as the script ever gets.

 I dunno. It's often shitty and kind of obnoxious; It's absolutely the sort of movie that can't wait to let you know how in it is on its own jokes. And I can't overstate how deeply fucking annoying it is to see cool effects and ideas mangled so badly by the camera work.
 In its favour, it doesn't waste a lot of time. The pacing is zippy, the monsters are cool, and there's more than enough silly mayhem to comfortably the fill the short runtime. And then there's the rare moment where it style comes together rather than hindering the action, such as when a head is popped like a zit, and the film's Saving-Private-Ryan shutter speed tomfoolery captures each goopy glob of gore perfectly.

 *: It really adds some unwelcome context to a scene where one of the female employees has to bend over for her boss. I'm sure Harvey found it hilarious.