Macabre…ish Horror Review: Feed Me
Feed Me, 2022/ 1 hr 36 min
A man, Jed (Christopher Mulvin), loses his wife, Liv (Samantha Loxley), to suicide after years of struggling with eating disorders. After her funeral, Jed meets a man named Lionel (Neal Ward). He says he can take the weight of Jed’s mourning away and leaves his card.
He’s on the verge of cutting his wrist before he decides to call Lionel instead. He promises to help him commit suicide through consensual human consumption. Lionel wants to eat Jed.
About Lionel, well he’s an odd duck, he lives in filth with a headless corpse, he wears a wig and has a strange and mysterious collection of lamps. He has newspapers covering his windows and grime is on every surface, including the walls. He enjoys going to funerals and helping people die.
Jed calls the next day, he still wants to do it. Lionel presents him with a contract that includes “termination and disposal upon breach of contract”, just in case Jed changes his mind. They start immediately, Lionel gives him drinks and says it’ll be painless and collects Jed’s phone.
Back at Lionel’s place, Jed is to change into a hospital gown and the drugs begin to work, he’s sick and can hardly walk. After an injection, Lionel immediately cuts off a finger, cooks and eats it. Then they go to bed.
This is gonna be a long assisted suicide because Lionel plans to keep him alive while he eats parts of his body. Meanwhile, Jed keeps having visions of Liv, questioning his decision.
The next day, Jed cleans up, gets dressed and leaves to replace the gold fish he killed after vomiting in it’s bowl.
He was hoping this suicide would be much faster, so Lionel hooks him up to a drip and promises him, two more days tops and then saws off his arm. But this time, it does hurt, a lot. Lionel frantically doses him to stop the screaming. It doesn’t work. Lionels yanks the arm the rest of the way off and cauterizes the wound with an iron. Then cooks and eats Jed’s arm, sitting across from him, he’s screamed himself into unconsciousness.
When the cops come around on a report of screaming, Lionel hides Jed in the bath tub. They question him and even unknowingly have a taste of Jed’s arm before they leave.
Afterward, Jed and Lionel have a heart to heart in the bathroom and Jed decides to help him get a girl. Even having Lionel dress up for a profile photo.
But Jed is done with this when he gets clarity about who Lionel is. He wants to go home but Lionel stops him with a paralyzing agent and cuts off his legs. This time he doesn’t cook and eat them, instead he freaks out and rampages inside the flat. Then pushes Jed into a room converted into freezer. In there are body parts and tools scattered around.
Lionel also goes on a date that quickly goes off the rails and he kills the woman and takes a table lamp on his way out of the restaurant.
The next time the cops (Nadia Lamin and Anto Sharpe) come, he’s not so lucky and he knows it. But he is a very ill man and once he’s done with the cops, he plays a disturbing little game with Jed. The police radio plays in the background and reinforcements are on the way.
This horror comedy was directed by Adam Leader and Richard Oakes. This movie feels like two completely different movies collided into each other. I don’t think this is a bad movie, it’s just disorienting for a while and Lionel and just the way he interacts with the world actually this movie a lot more disturbing as it goes on. The physical effects are good and the cut and saw scenes are often hard to watch sometimes. The actor who plays Jed really knows how to sell suffering. And Lionel does insane incredibly well. The freezer moment is one of the most devastating parts of the movie and there were many. The end was super unsatisfying. But I did enjoy this movie for what it was.