Feeders 3: The Final Meal

Feeders 3 is the sequel to a sequel of the film that nearly sunk Blockbuster Video. I re-watched the original recently and enjoyed it immensely, loving it's ultra cheap DIY nature. Feeders 3 is like every modern day Polonia film- more polished but lacking the youthful spirit and just plain sense of fun of films like Splatter Farm, Hallucinations, Dweller and many others. The movie picks up 20+ years after the events of the first two films. A film crew is making a documentary of the events while a mysterious man in a wheelchair looks on. He's played by Mark Polonia. There's also some scenes with a crazy, long-haired man in an insane asylum who is blamed for the aliens original killings. At the same time a new group of Feeders is returning to Earth, hungrier than ever. They are adorably ugly puppets like in the first one. The Feeder puppets used in the documentary are even goofier. To add a little spice this also takes place on Halloween.

The cast here has lots of recent Polonia regulars and even some veterans like Todd Carpenter and Jeff Kirkendall. No Jon McBride is a big letdown. He should do another Cannibal Campout film. Cannibal Campout but on Splatter Farm, anyone? Like Mark's Return to Splatter Farm this is a better made/acted film than the original but also completely lacking the "vibe" that made those films mircro-budget classics. There's a good dose of comedy here, some of it kind of funny. There's a generous amount of footage from the first two Feeders. We even a reference to Donna Michelle Productions, a character having that name. A bit odd since they released Splatter Farm and not Feeders. Some interludes with horror hosts are included which I don't see the point of.

The highlight here is of course the Feeder puppets with them having a decent amount of screen time in the second half. They have some fun attack scenes though they don't really eat anyone. The best kill is probably the old lady who thinks the Feeders are trick or treaters. There's a shower attack with no nudity but it's not really missed in this case. There's an appearance by Santa and some "stunning" revelations at the end. This is basically 79 minutes of silliness with two many characters and pointless subplots. It's nice to see the Feeders again even if the rest of the movie is on par with a lot of Mark's recent stuff. It's cliché but Feeders 3 is proof "you can't go home again".

While preparing for a movie shoot, the cast and crew of a film exploring the events of a small-town massacre years ago see the real-life aliens invade their project which alerts a therapist treating the survivor of the first invasion that his warnings were true and team up to stop the creatures.

This was a fine conclusion to the franchise that does have some issues. One of the finer features here is the strong storyline managing to bridge together the events of the entire series for a proper conclusion to the series. Explaining how the previous films fit into the established canon offers a fantastic series of continuity to provide the framework for the series of cheesy and generally setpieces here that are quite fun, ranging from attacks on the community to some fine ambushes on the film crew shooting off in the woods. These are silly enough with the design and use of the creatures offering a fun counterpoint to the action present which all makes the type of content here appropriately cheesy and goofy with the type of feel that the rest of the films featured that helps even further to connect everything together. These factors all manage to provide this one quite a slew of positive points to hold this one up while there are some problems to be had with this one. One of the main drawbacks to the film is the reliance on so much flashback footage from the other films to fill in the storyline that it doesn't leave much room for original content. Retelling the incidents and bringing everything together as a means of closing off the storyline about the invasion and him being the lone survivor does create a full-circle loop but it does so at the expense of everything else here leaving just small chunks for the new storyline to be expanded upon with the federal investigation into the incidents, the scientist studying the specimens and the film-crew shooting the movie retelling. These only serve to enhance some of the cheap and lazy feeling that's present here with the overt cheesiness of the special effects from the puppets to the CGI depictions of the ships in outer space that do add a likable cheesy quality to things if you're a fan of this approach.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.