Feed: The Irish Vampire-Demon Wakes

Bram Stoker was Irish, but most literary scholars believe Dracula was based more on Vlad the Impaler than vampiric Irish legends like the Abhartach and the Dearg-Due. The latter is female blood-consuming demon who will be quite angry and ravenous when a group of shallow influencers accidentally raise her from her centuries old trap. Of course, the blood of several brainless twentynothings will really hit the spot for a hungry Dearg-Due in director-screenwriter Marco van Belle’s Feed, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

To cheer her up, Orla Ryan’s friends are taking her on a weekend getaway that will focus on the one thing she hates most: social media posting. Orla was once an up-and-coming influencer, but she has been deeply depressed since inadvertently live-streaming her family’s auto-accident deaths, which she arguably caused. Ryan’s “bestie” Nessa, a queen bee influencer, finds all her moping tacky, so she hopes to snap her out of it—and get her posting again.

Soon after they arrive at their unholy Airbnb, they start exploring the grounds, which includes the creepy ancient pagan-looking ritual burial site. When Ryan pricks her finger, she starts bleeding all over the Dearg-Due’s prison-tomb, thereby reviving her.

Naturally, the Dearg-Due starts preying on Ryan’s friends, because she is starving. Like a vampire, she consumes blood, but her greatest power is her ability to create illusions that exploit her victims’ greatest pain and fears. Neesa and her fellow influencers simply represent potential food, but the Dearg-Due has a special interest in Ryan—lucky her.

Feed plays like one of the super-slick but totally cheesy teen-to-early-twenties horror movies that sprung up to capitalize on the success of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, which is both a criticism and an ironic recommendation. Van Belle’s execution is surprisingly polished, but also totally meat-headed. Frankly, it is exactly the kind of shameless indulgence horror fans sometimes crave.

Fortunately, von Belle and Daisy Jelley understand the kind of preening, unself-aware hot mess Nessa should be. Accordingly, Jelley plays the vapid diva to the hilt, overshadowing everyone else. Clinton Liberty is almost credible as Ryan’s supposedly sensitive and supportive boyfriend, Lorcan, who still goes along Nessa objectively terrible plan, while Grace Collender is moody (perhaps to a fault), as Ryan.

Van Belle serves up a fair degree of gore, but never to the point of overwhelming the audience. He also torches Gen-Z’s self-absorbed, anti-social attitudes. Everyone in this film would have been much better off if they had stayed in school or learned a trade, instead of pursuing clicks and sponsorships. Worth streaming as a silly guilty pleasure, Feed releases tomorrow (8/14) on-demand.