The BFI currently determines which films are eligible to receive tax breaks using two tests: whether a film is British-financed, and whether it is “culturally British”. Breaking that down further, it is straightforward to think of films that are culturally Scottish, culturally English or culturally Irish, but very hard to think of ones that are culturally Welsh. Which is one reason to welcome Lee Haven Jones’s feature film debut The Feast – or, more properly, Gwledd, as this is the first-ever Welsh-language horror film.
It may be his first feature, but Haven Jones is far from a novice. One area where Wales’s cultural industries have punched far above their weight is TV production, and this has allowed the director to sharpen his teeth on everything from Doctor Who to The Indian Doctor (as well as lots of shows which don’t have the word “doctor” in the title). As such, it’s no surprise that The Feast has a glossy, moody look that belies its budget. Its cinematographer, Bjørn Bratberg, is Norwegian, and there’s a detectably Scandinavian aesthetic to the film; a grey, damp, oppressive atmosphere, settings that swing from unspoiled nature to violently angular, glass-fronted modernist houses. It’s a style that’s very fashionable at the moment, but that doesn’t seem to be why Haven Jones and Bratberg are using it here. It feels like a natural response to both the Snowdonian locations and the kind of horror film The Feast is.
Others have described the film as folk horror, as eco-horror, as slow-burn horror – in truth, it’s all of this and more. The glacially paced opening, with its camera methodically pushing into each scene, suggests the influence of modern arthouse directors like Yorgos Lanthimos and Bong Joon-Ho rather than anything you’d find on Shudder
Indeed, there are points where the aesthetic seems to have a better grip on what kind of horror film this is than the script, which is written by producer Roger Williams. Others have described the film as folk horror, as eco-horror, as slow-burn horror – in truth, it’s all of this and more. The glacially paced opening, with its camera methodically pushing into each scene, suggests the influence of modern arthouse directors like Yorgos Lanthimos and Bong Joon-Ho rather than anything you’d find on Shudder, and its central plot – a domestic servant for a wealthy family proves to be a disturbing, disruptive presence – does indeed have vague Parasite overtones. The final act, though, is something else, going for full-on gross-out in a way that most “elevated” horror refuses to.
This is not a bad thing in and of itself – indeed, it would be a terrible thing if we refused to allow horror subgenres to cross-pollinate and take influence from each other. My gut feeling is that the mix here isn’t quite right, though. The tonal shift is too extreme to make for a consistent film, yet not quite extreme enough to be outrageous in the manner of From Dusk Till Dawn (or, indeed, Alex Garland’s recent Men, which also makes a shift from eerie folk horror to something more extreme). I enjoyed The Feast when it was trying to make me uneasy, and I enjoyed it when it was trying to make me puke, but I felt the absence of a middle ground, one that might have made me truly scared.
It remains a confident piece of work, and I’m minded to be generous towards films that falter because of an excess of ideas and ambition, rather than the opposite. From the opening scene – intercutting between a fracking drill and the aftermath of something unspecified yet clearly terrible – there is a very compelling ecological metaphor underneath it all, with Annes Elwy’s Cadi readable as a wrathful nature spirit as well as a class avenger. It may be far too early to do an auteurist analysis of Lee Haven Jones, but he definitely has a subversive spirit – the last piece of his work I saw before this involved Daleks exterminating the British Prime Minister. The carnage in The Feast is more grisly, and no less pointed.
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