Starring Annes Elwy, Nia Roberts, Julian Lewis Jones

Directed by Lee Haven Jones

Picturehouse Entertainment, out now

A dinner party in rural Wales is invaded by a malign earth spirit.

I was never a fan of the Saw movies. I only ‘saw’ the first two, but that was enough. They struck me as voyeuristically nasty, and ultimately pointless. That’s not what I enjoy about horror. I have a decent stomach for gore, but I need story and characters with complex inner dilemmas, making choices that will save or condemn them. I need someone to root for. I want the horror to be enlightening, and ultimately cathartic. His House, Relic and The Innocents are all good recent examples.

It is my contention that if you strip away the Welsh language, the subtitles, and the superficial folk-horror mysticism The Feast is barely more satisfying than the aforementioned torture franchise.

We are presented with Wales’s most unpleasant family, hosting Wales’s least appetising or welcoming dinner party, complete with vile guests – and whaddya know? – they are invaded by an angry earth goddess and all come to a bad end. I promise you this isn’t a spoiler. This is not a film that does surprises or plot twists. To be fair, the movie is well executed insofar as it looks great, and it is successfully atmospheric, although I could have done without the comically exaggerated foley. But when the characters don’t develop in any way (nasty at the beginning, nasty in the middle and nastily dead at the end) it makes for a dramatically flat experience.

It was also frustrating that many of the key plot points happen off screen, and rely on clunky expositional dialogue to fill in the blanks.

The cast do their best, but they don’t have much to work with. Everyone is utterly objectionable – including the vengeful earth spirit, whose particular brand of sadism seems a tad unwarranted. I once had my tyres slashed by Welsh Nationalists outside a holiday cottage in Llanbedr – and they or may not have had good cause – but after watching The Feast, I consider myself to have got off lightly. By the end of the film I had started to think that a bit of fracking was the least she and her sacred lands deserved.

Verdict: If you are an aficionado of gore with a bit of folk gubbins thrown in for good measure, and you’re not bothered about things like story, character development or catharsis, then The Feast is the movie for you, but I want a lot more from horror cinema than a plate of tasteless morsels covered in ketchup. 5/10

Martin Jameson