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Feed
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Unearthed Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (13th February 2025). |
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The Film
 After returning from a traumatic case in Hamburg involving cannibalism, Sydney cybercrime detective Phillip Jackson (The Road Killers' Patrick Thompson) tries to move on with a new case against the better judgment of his superior (Thompson's father Jack Thompson, Sunday Too Far Away) and his girlfriend Abbey (Rose Ashton) with whom he has a (one-sided) open relationship. When he discovers the world of feeders and gainers – a sexual fetish involving food consumption and weight gain – he happens upon a chat group discussing "celebrities" in that world on a website including more than one who have died. No one is willing to divulge the site but Phillip is able to capture an IP for feederx.com and discovers some disturbing images of excessively large, bedridden women being fed by a young man along with bio data for the women on which site members can wager when they will die before he is locked out the site. Although his civilian hacker colleague Nigel (Matthew Le Nevez) believes that the site is likely fake and the only real victims are paying members who think it is real, Phillip believes that the degree of security employed on the site must be hiding something more sinister; indeed, he believes that the content is real and that, while the arrangement might have started out as consensual, the women have no idea they are being fattened up for slaughter with the potential next victim in Deirdre (Muriel's Wedding's Gabby Millgate) seen online celebrating hitting her goal of six-hundred pounds. He employs tracking software to try to catch the real location but does not realize that he too is being tracked by the site's owner and operator Michael Carter (Hawaii Five-0's Alex O'Louglin) who has already initiated a cat-and-mouse game with Phillip even before he discovers that the site administrator logins are based in Toledo, Ohio; indeed, once Phillip arrives in Toledo, he is already under surveillance as he follows a string of clues that lead him to the priest (Ghosts... of the Civil Dead's David Field) who took Carter in as a child, his adoptive sister Jesse (Marika Aubrey) - who was skinny before Michael "saw her potential" – and even his devout wife Mary (Sherly Sulaiman) towards a warm welcome for the visitor from Down Under. Easily lost in the shuffle of turn-of-the-millennium serial killer films, Feed is also the last prominent genre work of Brett Leonard to date (serious, who remembers Highlander: The Source?). Leonard followed up his cult debut The Dead Pit with a trio of big budget studio works The Lawnmower Man, Hideaway, and Virtuosity. After a few years of developments falling through, Leonard directed Man-Thing for Marvel in Australia and followed it up by entering the realm of digital filmmaking with Feed. Underneath the viscous substances, stretch-marked latex, and Leonard's blackly comic approach, there is actually an interesting script with some provocative observations. In the feeder/gainer relationship, Phillip sees the ultimate dom/sub relationship in which the gainer gives up all control. Nigel asks which one is the dom and which is the sub if the feeder must not only feed but care for gainer in all their biological functions. Phillip sees the feeder as the one in control. While that appears to be the relationship between Michael and Deirdre, flashbacks to Michael's relationship with his mother – refreshingly something other than a Psycho retread – demonstrate how an enabler can be the victim in one scenario and the one in control in another while possibly subconsciously reliving the other relationship under the smokescreen of a philosophy about consumption as evolution and standards of beauty that seem just as oppressive and harmful as the ultimate liberation he sees in enabling feederism. The dynamic between Phillip and Michael is more interesting than the parallels drawn between their equally dysfunctional romantic relationships. Just as Phillip deduces the nature of Michael's and Deirdre's relationship as something more sinister, when Michael gets the upper hand the viewer perhaps gets either a distorted or perhaps more truthful picture of Phillip's and Abbey's relationship than in the seemingly more objective reality scenes combined with Phillip's own childhood flashbacks (and the climax puts a new spin on Phillip's behavior in the aftermath of the Hamburg raid). While Leonard's approach seems as over-the-top as the behavior in the film, in other hands, Feed might have been a more glum and bland Se7en knockoff. 
Video
Feed was picked up stateside by TLA Releasing and released on DVD as part of their "Danger After Dark" line of genre imports in its full, unrated version which is the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen feature presentation. The film was shot on the Sony Cine Alta 900 high definition camera – with standard definition DVCAM for the web videos – and finished in 1080p there is nothing really to remaster. The film's grading is deliberately skewed away from naturalism with pumped up saturation from the blanket blue tint of the Hamburg scenes to the Australian scenes which look the closes to normal to the Toledo scenes which generally skew towards yellow and orange tints (the intensity of which only seems limited to preventing blonde-dyed, fair-skinned O'Loughlin from disappearing into the highlights. Textures are most appreciable in close-ups from Thompson's stress lines to the queasy folds of the fat suit by Make-up Effects Group (The Matrix) while the film's digital effects are largely restricted to titles, transitions, and website inserts. 
Audio
The disc includes DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0 stereo tracks with optional English SDH and English subtitles. The 5.1 track is as busy as the digital editing and graphic overlays in terms of music – including distorting the pitch of classic songs like The Association's "Cherish" and covers of other "sickly sweet" songs – and loud jolting sound effects while the actual surround atmosphere of the environments is rather subdued fitting the narrow perspectives of the protagonist and antagonist. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by the DVD-era audio commentary by director Brett Leonard who reveals that he had just made Man-Thing with both Thompsons, Nevez, and O'Loughlin when Thompson the younger and O'Louhglin came to him with the story for Feed. Leonard discusses the disturbing research they did on the film – all of the website graphics were created by the production – and his decision not to impose a viewpoint but stimulate discussion about what is normal and what is illegal between consenting adults. Leonard also provides anecdotes about the shooting, using his home and those of the cast, directing the sex scenes for spontaneity and realism, and shooting the most disturbing sequence with O'Loughlin and Millgate on his own in a closed set using his bedroom, knocking out all the necessary shots of this queasy sequence in fifteen minutes. The disc also offers what is titled the U.S. cut (91:06) – in 720p24 with the choice of a temp mix or a dual mono track in Dolby Digital 2.0 – which was not what the U.S. got but might have either shown in some venues or was tailored for an R-rating without actually being certified as such or even possibly finished given the aforementioned audio options. This version considerably cuts down the film's sex and nudity – although most of the cut nudity is male despite Leonard's remarks on the commentary about equal opportunity nudity in his films – but also has a few scenes shifted in order and a couple additional scenes and scene extensions not in the main version of the film on the disc including a stop by Thompson in a Hamburg night club in the aftermath of the raid on the cannibal's house, as well as an extension to the restroom scene in which Patrick's boss overhears him crying at the sink.  The disc's selection of deleted and extended scenes are where the disc's curating gets a bit wonky. The first segment of deleted scenes (22:42; with optional commentary by director Brett Leonard) features the entirety of the Hamburg nighclub scene exclusive to the U.S. cut, a subplot involving diabetes – which pays off in the film's unused alternate ending – some more dysfunctional scenes between Phillip and Abbey including one in which she observes his research and mocks the body image of the gainers, another Deirdre feeding scene intended to be set to Gary Puckett's "Young Girl" but scrapped when Puckett refused its use here, a few more scenes depicting Phillip's search in Toledo before he happens upon the house and Father Turner, and most intriguingly a scene in Australia where Phillip goes to a Chinese restaurant to meet an informant promising information which turns out to be Carter posing as an NSA agent to further bait his pursuer (as played by O'Loughlin with his natural dark hair and a beard before he shaved and dyed his hair blond for the rest of the shoot). The alternate ending (0:59; with optional commentary by director Brett Leonard) is included in the aforementioned deleted scenes and the separate menu option is not a duplicated video but just selects that final chapter of video. On the other hand, the additional deleted & extended scenes (40:48) not only includes – with the exception of the Hamburg nigthtclub scene – most of the aforementioned scenes sans commentary along with a few more bits of time-coded workprint but also all of the scenes present in the original cut but deleted from the U.S. cut including the full version of the Hamburg raid, the sex scenes and bits of male nudity, which suggests that it was an extra that was intended to accompany that version of the film had it been released on disc but of less value in the context of the feature and the other extras. The disc also includes a selection of outtakes (10:59) which includes more nightclub footage and shots of Phillip arriving and leaving locations, behind the scenes footage (28:12) devoted to the construction and fitting of Deirdre's fat suit and some test footage, and an infomercial (7:40) which is more like bits for a jokey piece never actually assembled. Also included are a quartet of short interviews starting with the final day interview with director Brett Leonard (4:22) who conveys the urgency to finish the film and post-production due to the topical nature of the film while the interview with actor Alex O'Loughlin (6:03) has him recalling a friend directing him to an SBS documentary on the subject, his initial feelings of revulsion and even anger at the health risk and then seeing some loving relationships leading him to start working out a story with Thompson that turned into a thriller, an interview with producer Melissa Beauford (4:52) who recalls Leonard approaching her with the script and the challenge of finding funding for it, and finally an interview with actor Jack Thompson (0:56) briefly reflecting on the subject matter. "Feed in Philadelphia: The North American Premiere" (8:37) is an excerpt from the post-screening Q&A of the film attended by O'Loughlin and Beauford. The disc also includes a photo gallery (1:10) and theatrical trailer (1:20). 
Overall
While director Brett Leonard's approach seems as over-the-top as the behavior in the film, in other hands, Feed might have been a more glum and bland Se7en knockoff.
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