Canada. 2014.
Crew
Director/Screenplay – Braden Croft, Producers – Elizabeth Levine & Adrian Salpeter, Photography – Naim Sutherland, Music – Patric Caird, Makeup Effects/Creature Design – Travis Shewchuk, Production Design – Nataliya Fedulova. Production Company – Compound B/Random Bench Productions.
Cast
Tyler Johnston (Kris Oates), Shawn Roberts (Will Oates), Emily Tennant (Brit), Britt Irvin (Emma), Aleks Paunovic (Pete), Lane Edwards (Hank), Eduard Witzke (Curtis)
Plot
Following the death of the woman who raised them, brothers Kris and Will Oates receive their inheritance from her lawyer. In the box of items, Will finds a videotape and realises that it shows the parents they never knew in the town of Tendale. Will, Kris and Kris’s girlfriend Brit decide to go to Tendale to see if he can find any information about them. The two brothers argue the entire way, Kris regarding Will as a slacker and freeloader who has never done anything with his life. They find Tendale a remote and unwelcoming place. After signing into a bed-and-breakfast, Will becomes fascinated with the Bigfoot tours that are run in the area. However, as they dig into the secrets of the town, it becomes apparent that the locals have formed a pact with the creatures to sacrifice newcomers to them so that they can leave.
Feed the Gods was the second film for Canadian director Braden Croft. In the horror genre, Croft had previously made Hemorrhage (2012) and subsequently went on to make True Fiction (2019).
For the greater part of its running time, it is hard to peg exactly what is going on, even what type of film that Feed the Gods is. There is one of the standard sinister small towns that we get by the plenty in the horror genre. Here it appears that the locals are for some obscure purpose sacrificing people who come into the town. You eventually get the impression that it is something to do with their being allowed to leave – why this is the case and any details about the peculiar pact, as laid out by the cryptic prologue, is never explained.
Lurking around in the background are Bigfoot/feet, which it would appear are the gods alluded to in the title and which people are being sacrificed to. It takes a long time however for Feed the Gods to get through its preamble and start being a horror film. The disappointment is that even when it does, it is never very clear what is happening. Moreover, the lurking Bigfoot appears very little throughout.
In all, Feed the Gods feels like the case of a film that makes some peculiar choices about structure that end up letting most of its potential slip through its grasp. The intention to create cryptic mystery leaves you wanting to know what is going on for most of its running time, only for this to never arrive. The decision to group most of the horror material into the last third leaves a long wait through the build-up.
Certainly, this allows characterisations to come more to the fore and the film comes with an unusually strong degree of focus in the constant bickering between the two brothers – Tyler Johnston’s young yuppie and his dislike of Shawn Roberts aimless slacker ways – although the downside is that this makes neither leading character particularly likeable.
Trailer here