Feeders 2: Slay Bells (1998)

There's a real possibility this is the lowest-budgeted production I've ever looked at for this blog. Even the term "micro-budget" doesn't convey the experience of watching this. I've seen student films with significantly higher production values. And, for what it's worth, that's all intentional. This isn't trying to be "good" for any meaningful definition of that word. It's very clearly aiming for the sort of movie a group of friends might rent in the late '90s and laugh at. This was, of course, the decade of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (unsurprisingly, both Feeders and Feeders 2 were eventually covered by RiffTrax).

The filmmakers behind these movies are twin brothers John and Mark Polonia, credited as co-directors on Feeders 2. Mark is also the star and wrote the script under a pseudonym. The main cast members also appear to be Mark's family, though the kids were credited under different names (possibly his wife, too - she's credited here are Maria Humes, her "official" stage name is Maria Davis, and assuming IMDB is correct she's been credited under the last names of "Russo" and "Polonia" on various productions).

The quality of acting and directing is difficult to separate from the intent of the movie. That's a fancy way of saying, "Everything is very bad, but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be bad so I don't want to be too harsh in my appraisal of the performances." Dialogue is delivered in an artificial, wooden manner reminiscent of cheap '70s genre flicks, only more so. The creatures are puppets at a quality similar to (and this is not an exaggeration) children's arts and crafts. The film is... well... not actually film, as it's very clearly recorded on video. Extended sequences of the movie may very well be recordings the Polonia made simultaneously as holiday videos and as part of this production.

I should note I haven't seen the original Feeders, though the sequel cuts away to a seven-minute long recap about halfway through in which the survivor of that movie recounts the events over black-and-white footage. Either the quality of the first movie was somewhat better or this stuff just works better without color, because this section was an improvement over the look of Feeders 2. Not a huge improvement, but still.

The plot of Feeders 2: Slay Bells is virtually nonexistent. The premise is that the small alien monsters of the first movie come to Earth and attack a family at Christmas. They also attack and kill a couple other people. And a cat. And they attack Santa, who helps the father of the main family. Santa uses a ray gun to kill a bunch of the aliens, then he teleports a gift-wrapped bomb into the alien craft. Then he uses magic or something to fix everything. The main character begins to think it was all a dream, but as he unwraps a Christmas gift, one of the Feeders springs out. End of movie.

The rest of the 68 minute runtime is spent... well... mostly just filming characters. There are long sequences of the family getting ready for Christmas accompanied by midi holiday music. The kids play with wrapping paper. There's also a priest nearby: we spend more time than is necessary watching him read and look around his basement before being killed. There's no indication the other characters know him. And of course there are extended sequences of the Feeders themselves just... doing stuff. Flying their spaceship. Looking around. Stalking people. Investigating Christmas decorations.

Mostly, it's all kind of boring. There are a handful of decent jokes when Santa shows up, and I chuckled at the comically absurd "flying sleigh" pulled by reindeer decorations. But on the whole the joke doesn't maintain itself without the presence of someone making fun of it, and the fact this seems to be made for the express purpose of being mocked isn't exactly a ringing endorsement (it also kind of defeats the purpose of laughing at a bad movie if the movie was setting up the jokes). Other than that, the POV homages to Sam Raimi were fine. I wouldn't call them good, but they looked significantly better than the rest of this.

I'm not inclined to give this a pass for its budget, either. By the time they made Feeders 2, the Polonia brothers had been doing this for more than a decade. On top of that, Feeders actually did pretty well due to a boost from Blockbuster Video, so they should have had both the resources and incentive to up their game for the sequel. I don't begrudge them for aiming for "so bad it's good" or for trivial things like plot holes, cheesy dialogue, or intentionally bad effects. But there's really no excuse for this not being more interesting. This movie lacks energy and effort: that's a major problem at any budget. Intentionally bad movies should be fun, and this just isn't.

I don't have much to say about the holiday elements. It's a joke. This is set at Christmas, because they found the idea of Feeders attacking during the holidays funny. Other than that, I mentioned how some sequences seemed to be doubling as family Christmas videos. I have no idea whether this was literally filmed over Christmas or at some other time of year, but I wouldn't be surprised if a great deal of this was quite literally a family home movie. It certainly feels like one, and - to be frank - not a particularly good one.