Feeding the Masses

Part 2 of our Modern American Independents series finds us heading from the plains of Texas up to Pawtucket, Rhode Island for Feeding the Masses, a zombie film focusing on the state of modern media. Imagine if the characters from Dawn of the Dead had never left the TV studio. Rachel (her comments in red) joins me again to tell you if you should tune in or change the channel.

STAT SHEET

SUB-SUB-GENRE: Media Satire

BEST ZOMBIE: The one on the DVD box cover, who, sadly, is not in the film.

MEMORABLE QUOTES: “Bitchy McBitch-Bitch”
“Praise Jesus!” “Praise Jesus? We’re Fucked!”

IS IT SCARY: There’s one ‘boo’ scare, and a little tension, but generally, no.

PAIRED COCKTAIL: “Coffee with enough Irish crème to choke a donkey” Are you kidding me?

We should probably begin this with a disclaimer. This is a truly independent film, and although I have no facts on this, it is more of a NO-budget movie than a low budget flick. If you are someone who can’t handle movies shot on DV, scenes using available lighting, cheap computer effects, then stay away. But if you can dig on filmmakers who tell their story with minimal resources, films that come from a true love of the genre, then keep reading.

Feeding the Masses starts in the early days of a zombie infection and follows three employees of a Rhode Island TV news station and their military escort as they report on the infection. The screenplay, penned by Troma alum and B-movie mogul Trent Haaga, focuses on the complacency of corporate media and its relationship with the government. The film itself seems unsure if it wants to be a media satire, a serious zombie drama, or an indulgent B-movie.

All of the acting in this film, like in Dead & Breakfast, is way over the top, however, unlike D&B, the overacting doesn’t feel self-reflective. It’s more like stage actors who don’t know to tone it down for the camera. When you’re on stage you have to entertain the people in the back of the house and this requires a different type of acting than for a camera lens only a few feet away. This being said Billy Garberina (who die-hard fans will recognize from The Stink of Flesh) is still a lot of fun to watch as Torch, the neurotic cameraman and star of the film. His character at best is like a megalomaniac with nothing to focus his angst on (think Ahab sans whale) and at worst is like an impression of Randal from Clerks. His costume also referenced Pvt. Joker from Full Metal Jacket. The rest of the performances were cable access quality, but still fun to watch, if a little flat.

The characters that really surprised me were two of the smaller roles. I loved Victor Martins as Fred Berman, a Leave it to Beaver-type character who will hunt down your zombie relatives and give them a humane re-killing. I also like Jeremy Owen (who was also the Assistant Director) as Tate, a seedy strip club bouncer. The scene where the two meet and come into conflict was one of the best scenes in the film.

Andrew Vellenoweth’s cinematography in Feeding the Masses doesn’t do much to support the performances. During Torch’s ranting monologue scene, the camera stays on one straight shot of him for the duration of his speech, lasting well over a minute. This is tough for an audience to take even with a well-known actor (one of these scenes that does work is Virginia Madsen’s speech about Pinot grapes in Sideways). All four of the main characters have these monologue scenes and the other three work better. Rachel Morris’ final report works really well because they inter-cut her broadcast with television viewers and the other characters’ reactions (up until she gets to the “Live every day as your last” crap). The army escort, Roger’s (played by Patrick Cohen) ‘monologue’ scene is a masturbation scene. Now I can’t imagine masturbation scenes are easy to do creditably as an actor, kind of like playing drunk, but Patrick Cohen does it well and it’s easily one of the best scenes in the movie which I’m not going to give away here. Well, I’ll give a little away. I was very struck by the type of sexual repression or even anger that Roger expressed in this scene, and the fact that he’s a soldier made me start to ask some serious questions as to what the military establishment does to a man’s sexuality in light of the recent Iraq rape scandal.

The film alternates between the regular shots and ‘in camera’ shots where the audience is looking though the perspective of a camera inside the story world. My biggest problem with the camera work was the lack of distinction between these two types of shots. If there had been a difference, it would have given the film some much needed stylization and gotten rid of the feeling that Feeding ambled along instead of proceeding with purpose. I think director Richard Griffin, who did a good job as the director of photography for Stink of Flesh, should have worn another hat and operated the camera on this film.

The unadorned cinematography didn’t help the plain locations either; all of the exteriors where fine, but the interiors could have been shot at their community college. For example take the diner scene; it looked like a prefab school cafeteria and not a real restaurant. Are you going to tell me that there are no authentic looking diners in Pawtucket? Independent filmmakers are always on the look out for ways to up their production value for cheap, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to shoot in as many real locations as possible.

But I don’t want to drop a steamer all over their cinematography. There was an amazing night shot with rotting zombie girl ambling up to a neon lit storefront. She slowly gazes in the window at a picture of a sales model. The juxtaposition of new and old, dead and alive worked really well.

The editing was mostly invisible in this movie, which is of course what a good editor strives for. Bad editing is impossible to miss, but good editing is invisible, and, outside of a continuity error, that’s what this film had. It also covered up instances where it looked like the scenes had been begun at one location and finished at another.

The score by Daniel Hildreth was as equally transparent as the editing. Although it was all original synthesizer music, it never came off as corny or overwhelming. They made a smart choice by keeping it in the background and never giving in to the temptation of a big music swell.

This was another film with some really bland zombies and boring gore. The zombies were all done using a cookie cutter formula, with gray face paint, some dried blood, and a little loose skin. Feeding the Masses is all blood and no guts. Whenever the violence comes, there’s plenty of fake blood, but no entrails being pulled, no limbs ripping from sockets, not even a decent shot of a rotting maw pulling a huge hunk of flesh off an arm or neck. These effects can be done cheaply but there were none here and the gore hound in me was very disappointed.

The area our opinions differed the most on was the special effects in the film. There was lots of CG gunshots, bullet casings flying, and explosions. I think the white muzzle flashes that accompanied the gunshots looked like the ‘bams’ and ‘ka-pows’ from the old Batman TV show, too cheesy for my tastes. I think going the extra mile with blanks would have made a huge difference, even if that meant they had to trade in their AK-47s for handguns. I disagree. I can appreciate these gunshots added in post when I think back to how these scenes were done in other films before this technology was available to everyone. It used to be when you fired a gun the camera framed the shooter where you couldn’t see the barrel, which is much cheesier to me than the computer solution. Plus a muzzle flash is about 1/60th of a second long, which if you are shooting on traditional film stock gives you about a 50% chance of actually capturing the desired effect. We both agreed though that the CG fires looked horribly flat.

Given all of this, I still wouldn’t discount Feeding quite yet. There was tons of stuff in this film that worked. All of the satire on the media and how we interact with it worked incredibly well. The commercial asides were varied and included commercials for zombie related services reminiscent of Stacy, militant manifestos from backwoods survivalists, a cooking show, newscasts, and a 50’s style filmstrip. Individually they were all funny, but added up together paint a picture of a full on propaganda war being fought by the government as brutal as the battles fought in the street. Other zombie films have certainly included newscasts before, but they were always giving out earnest information to help people. This film’s usage of media felt much more real to me. Would our current administration try to warn us, or keep us calm? Help us get out of harms way, or keep us out of their path? Feeding asks the question if the government spoon-feeds us lies through the media as policy, would anything change at the end of the world? This is an idea that even Max Brooks didn’t explore in World War Z.

I also liked how the film looked at the importance of TV in our lives. Torch’s roommate is glued to the TV as news reports come in. How many people did that exact thing after 9/11? However having up to the minute coverage still didn’t help him. When the Governor gives his address, he speaks though a small TV on a podium while Torch and other cameramen film the TV. Of course anyone who’s pointed their camcorder at their TV knows it won’t film right, and this adds to the disjointed mood.

There was also kitsch in this film, but it was handled so weirdly I couldn’t tell if it was intentional or not. When Torch drops in the middle of the street and screams “NO!” at the top of his lungs, they’re going for camp. But other times aren’t so obvious, like in the big pot-smoking scene where the lights dim and the porno music comes on. It sounds campy when you read it, but they gave it such serious passion you would have thought the filmmakers where Jamaican. It was this lack of conviction with the tone of their film that hurt them the worst I think. Was it serious? Was it Kitsch? Was it satire? It tried to be all three and ended up mediocre.

2 out of 5 on the decomposition scale

copyright © D.L. Noah 2007