Feeding the Masses

August 30, 2005

Rated: NR Runtime: 90 min Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The MFG Zombie Month reviews continue with Feeding the Masses, a brand new zombie movie from Shock-O-Rama Cinema. It will be screening at a few conventions and festivals this summer before its August 16th DVD release date.

Feeding the Masses This movie will probably get compared to the original Dawn of the Dead because of its social commentary. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of zombie gore to keep you satisfied. But the filmmakers, director Richard Griffin (director of photography on The Stink of Flesh) and screenwriter Trent Haaga (writer of Citizen Toxie, actor in Suburban Nightmare), go after the powerful presence the news media occupies in our current culture.

Even though zombies have taken over the streets of America, the television stations continue to air optimistic reports that conditions are improving. It turns out that the U.S. government controls these stations, and they don’t want the American people to lose faith in the government’s ability to keep the streets free of walking corpses.

In Rhode Island, a reporter (Morris) and a cameraman (Garberina) are determined to broadcast the truth. Along with a soldier escort (Cohen), they set out into the city to capture footage of the massive zombie infestation. The reporter wants fame, the cameraman wants to create the next Zapruder film, and the soldier just wants to get into the reporter’s pants.

Throughout the movie, various commercials appear. There’s one for a funeral home that properly captures and “re-kills” re-animated loved ones. Another commercial encourages people to leave their homes and safely enjoy nightlife on a party bus. Both of these diversions end up tying into the main storyline.

I thought the technical details were excellent. The computer-generated special effects worked pretty well in advancing the story, even though they couldn’t compete with a big-budget Hollywood crapfest.

I found Haaga’s script to be very intelligent, especially for this type of movie. It breaks away from the traditional zombie movie convention of the survivors getting holed up in a location surrounded by zombies. Having a news crew on the street seeking the zombies out is a fresh take on the genre, and I like it.

I think it’s a shame that this production didn’t have a bigger budget, though. My primary complaint is that there weren’t nearly enough zombies. The final scene features dozens of zombies, and I’m not complaining about that. I’m referring to the characters talking at length about how the streets are overrun with zombies, but when they venture out into the city, there’s only three or four flesheaters. That’s pretty small potatoes compared to the hundreds of zombies seen in movies like the original Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead, or the thousands of CGI zombies seen in the Dawn remake.

I’m only bitching because I really enjoyed Feeding the Masses. I just wanted it to be a little better. I highly recommend this one, especially to horror fans who’ve grown tired of the same old zombie movie formula.

Posted by Chris Terranova | Filed Under 4 Stars, DVD, Horror, NR, Patrick Cohen, Rachel Morris, Walter Cotter, William DeCoff, William Garberina