Aaron Ploof
What’s more entertaining than doomscrolling through your social feed? How about five 20-ish-year-olds facing off against a vampire in a brutal bloodfest? In Feed, you get the best of both worlds. The film plays on its double meaning by critiquing the “fakeness” and vampiric ways of exerting influence. At the same time, it also delivers a satisfying and original—if not quite perfect—take on the vampire genre.
The main action of the film takes place in an Airbnb-like cabin in Ireland. A group of friends has rented out the house to shoot footage for Nessa’s (Daisy Jelley) product line. That’s the story she’s telling Orla (Grace Collender), at least. In truth, Austin (Rhys Mannion), Lorcan (Clinton Liberty), Sean (Oskar Smith), and Nessa have taken Orla to the cabin to host an intervention.
Orla has experienced tremendous tragedy in her life and is stuck in a rut. She can’t move forward, and her friends are exasperated. Their trip to the cabin is a last-ditch effort to bring her to her senses. Unfortunately, while the group is out exploring in the woods next to the cabin, they unearth something much more horrible. That something is a vampire.
The Dearg Due (Niamh Hogan) is relentless, intelligent, and cunning. It can use its powers to manipulate and worm its way into its victims’ minds. In fact, it causes them to hallucinate and harm themselves and others. Its main objective is to find a new host, and Orla makes for the perfect receptacle. See, a host must be willing to invite the Dearg Due into itself for it to take residence. So, Orla’s current mental health and spiritual emptiness are enticing to the Dearg Due. This is because it knows it can entice Orla using the power that comes with being the vampire. Power that may be able to resurrect Orla’s loved ones.
This makes for a great character arc for Orla. The film opens with Collender playing her almost catatonic, barely responding to any of her friends’ dialogue. Yet, as she starts hallucinating and discovering her friend’s true motives, she grows more desperate.
The director of the film, Marco van Belle, uses the entire vampire story to comment on how social media can be altered and used to lie to its consumers. Nessa is a beauty queen, but she’s not a particularly successful one, and she masks her insecurity behind the camera. Her products are fake, and she uses Photoshop to alter her image, making her entire brand a lie. Likewise, Sean looks for validation from Nessa. Deep down, he’s terrified that she finds him annoying and useless. Dearg Due uses these insecurities to turn friend against friend. Unfortunately, the other characters aren’t given much to do. Lorcan gets a few action sequences, but his character is easily forgotten. Austin doesn’t make much of an impression either.
But the action and the mood setting more than make up for the weaknesses of the script. From the outset of the film, especially when we’re following Orla, the movie uses techniques like subdued audio and overlapping sounds to convey Orla’s lonely existence. As the vampire casts spells over her mind, she sees horrific visions. These are matched by the arguments she has with Nessa, as their friendship implodes.
The movie brings its A-game forward with its lighting and gore effects. There are a few especially gnarly sights to see here and coupled with the way the film employs its colors and lights, it easily captures the otherworldly feel it’s going for. A few of the CGI effects near the end of the film could use some work. They come off kind of cheesy, and don’t exactly nail the look they’re going for.
But all in all, this is a rather solid vampire flick. It doesn’t earn its spot in the upper stratosphere of vampire classics like Let the Right One In, but it’s not going for a drama, so much as a psychological thriller with a good helping of horror. For a vampire B-Movie about social media, you could do much worse.
