I know there has been a solid lack of updating these last few weeks, but I’ve had the honour of having my dad visiting for the last three weeks. While that was pretty fantastic, I’m now behind on absolutely everything from emails to writing to replying to my mother’s “Merry Christmas” text. Going back to work after the holidays is always a bit of a bitch too. January and February is what I will forever deem “the slump months.” Endless days of darkness and being broke.

So for this week’s movie, I thought I would go with something as mindless as the review I’m going to write for it. Feeding Frenzy is a 2010 movie by Red Letter Media, a production company based in Wisconsin who came to notoriety with their blockbuster riffs. Feeding Frenzy is a parody of films like Ghoulies and Critters and it reeks of it in pretty much every scene with over-the-top comedy and outlandish situations.

A prostitute arrives at a motel (which is really located in Franklin, Wisconsin) where she meets her client. She’s a rather reluctant prostitute, who doesn’t seem very enthusiastic about the man in the wheelchair. But he seems even less enthusiastic about her after he kills her with his knife/cane device and her brains end up everywhere. He’s then seeing rolling her body through a hardware store.

In the morning on Downer Ave in Milwaukee, the killer (Mr Plinkett) is managing the hardware store where Jesse Camp works cleaning up the man’s messes. Jesse is constantly being threatened by his boss, saying that if he doesn’t comply, he’ll reveal Jesse’s “dark secret”.

During his shift, Jesse’s crush Christina shows up at the store with her boyfriend Kyle. They’re about the biggest idiots as you’d expect.  Jesse is convinced that Christine is with Kyle because she’s too afraid to leave him. But Jesse is clearly also an idiot (which is pretty much the theme of this movie), he decides to finally tell Christine how he feels while he’s in the middle of a conversation with her friend who was about to say she was raped. Jesse is the stupid stockboy that makes Ash Williams look brilliant and thoughtful.

Mr Plinkett orders Jesse to go downstairs and get the tape from Monday night. He delivers the tape back to his boss, who immediately crushes it with his hands. Mr Plinkett becomes even more suspicious when Jesse finds the bag of Christine’s friend stuffed in the Lost and Found box. When he meets up with Christine, she tells him that her friend has gone missing. She seems reluctant to believe him until Kyle convinces her otherwise. The three agree to go to the hardware store that night and see if they can find out anything about Mr Plinkett.

The three get caught by Mr Plinkett while searching his secret part the basement. Kyle, being brave, demands to know what’s hidden inside the giant box. Mr Plinkett agrees, and Kyle is immediately feasted upon by creatures that look like fat, fleshy balls with teeth. While trying to escape, Christine and Jesse accidentally let the creatures out into the world. The beasts then begin feasting on the city, eating more than enough to fill their tiny stomachs.

Meanwhile, Christine, Jesse and Jesse’s co-worker Carl take to the streets to set things right.  They all capture the little beasties and trap them in a box, but they are caught (of course) by Mr Plikett and his henchman. He gives his overly-complicated reasoning to the backstory behind the monsters before ordering them into his car.  Christine and Jesse wake up strapped to tables. Mr Plinkett gives yet another reasoning behind everything, and the reveal is that he’s brought his wife back to life using the critters. She ends up looking like something between a goblin from Troll 2 and a yeti.

It’s up to Christine and Jesse to set things right, but considering they are two of the least intelligent characters to grace the screen nothing is straightforward. There’s a sort of meandering ending, but there’s at least one amusing bit to make you feel satisfied.

Feeding Frenzy is supposed to be as silly and nonsensical as the movies it’s paying homage to, but a lot of the humor just feels a bit flat. The characters are dumb. Everything they do is dumb. It was a bit too tongue-in-cheek for my taste, but I suppose it will appeal to it’s intended crowd. Just never take it seriously for a second. It is decently gory and pretty fun at time, though. Certainly a movie worth watching if you need something stupid to fill a void in your life. But if you really want some campy classics, just stick to the originals.