[SXSW 2021 World Premiere Review] The Feast Is a Scrumptious Eco-Horror Set in Wales

“I’ve been planning this for weeks,” Glenda (Nia Roberts), the matriarch of a very rich family, says to Cadi (Annes Elwy) towards the beginning of Lee Haven Jones’ Wales-set The Feast. Like a lot of what Glenda says, it’s a comment dripping with disdain and anger over Cadi’s late arrival. She wasn’t even supposed to be her waitress for her spectacular party tonight, but the woman Glenda typically used had to be replaced at the last minute. For Glenda, that’s all her current life is: a replacement for something that came before. 

Take her harsh new home, a monolith of Brutalism that perches on an otherwise beautiful hill. It was once her parents’ farm but her new family demolished it and now all of her parents’ utensils and furniture “don’t suit the place now. They feel primitive.” Glenda’s family, meanwhile, are the worst kind of entitled rich people. One of her sons Gweirydd (Siôn Alun Davies) gave up scholarship to train for a triathlon and is now obsessed with shearing his body. Their other son Guto (Steffan Cennydd) is an addict who is now stuck in the house against his will. Rounding out their family is the patriarch Gwyn (Julian Lewis), a corrupt politician who wants to comodify the vast farm lands by drilling for oil and rich resources. 

Told through chapters that ominously portend an eventual doom for Glenda and her family, most of The Feast follows the preparations for the night’s big feast. It slowly reveals the family dynamics while exploring the mysterious character of Cadi. She wafts through the house like a spirit, casually and coldly surveying the family and their obsessions, catching Gweirydd shaving his testicles or Guto sniffing an oily rag. Yet when she touches things in the house, she sometimes leaves behind mud and when she sees the cruel manner in which Gwyn unceremoniously drops a pair of slain rabbits or the preceding gunshot, she jumps in fear and horror. 

Cinematographer Bjørn Ståle Bratberg captures the events with a chill, sometimes detached eye that feels appropriate to the way Cadi views this family. Like the Brutalistic house, The Feast has a crisp, modern feel to it; sharp lines and shapes. It frames shots as if in a portrait itself, with a focus on symmetries and sharp edges. As Cadi walks through the house, her waifish figure becomes a dichotomous outsider to a house made of poured concrete and bricks. Meanwhile the script by Roger Williams takes its time unraveling mysteries and leading a breadcrumb of hints about what’s truly going on. 

By the end of the film, the narrative gleefully unveils its hand and the film becomes almost Grand-Guignolian in its flourishes. It’s a slow burn that leads to a tremendous third act that left me cringing at some of the ideas on display. It’s another eco-horror out of SXSW and it’s also one of the festival’s best.