In the roughly two years since I've started writing for Monsters At Play, quite a bit has changed. I've gone through a few women, jobs have come and gone, and my cinematic tastes have changed. I have become quite fond of independent film, but my taste for zombie films has started to wane a bit, the growth/degradation of the two almost diametrically opposed. Then I figured it all out: indie filmmakers love making zombie flicks. It's pretty easy to keep within a tight budget when your monsters are normal guys and girls with some waxy makeup and a mouthful of stage blood, maybe a prosthetic or two for good measure.

The main problem, of course, is that a lot of these films are, to be brutally honest, so strictly following the Romero/Fulci formulae that they become limited by their subject matter more than their meager budgets: unknown virus/chemical/cosmic rays/whatever has possessed the dead and made them want nothing more than the sweet, warm meat of a plucky group of survivors who will slowly be pared down over the course of the film. That sums it up pretty well, I'd say. Unfortunately, most of the time people lean more towards the Fulci side of the formula, sacrificing Romero's well-fleshed characters with dopey mongoloids that are less human beings and more smorgasbords on legs, not taking into account that, despite low funds, Fulci still offered up genuinely gross, hyper-real gore for our eyes to drink up.

Feeding The Masses, the latest release from e.i. Cinema's Shock-o-Rama imprint, falls squarely between the two masters as far as concepts: there's plenty of gooey gore to be had, but the people wading ankle-deep through it are likeable despite (or perhaps because of) their flaws. Unfortunately, it falls prey to a few problems of its own.

The epicenter of the apocalypse this time around is Providence, RI, where the remaining shreds of the Channel 5 News team is forced by their hardass station managers to film sappy local stories despite the growing zombie threat brought on by the recently-named Lazarus Virus. Unfortunately, the station managers don't take into account that their team, comprised of Torch the cameraman, Sherry the reporter, and Roger the military escort, see the situation going to hell in a handbasket, and decide to break through the veil of government-controlled news to report the real situation. Unfortunately, they have government agent Chris Barnes (a sly wink at the Cannibal Corpse/Six Feet Under frontman, perhaps?) and the growing zombie horde in their way.

With Feeding The Masses, screenwriter Trent Haaga (more famous for his acting in roles in Citizen Toxie, Terror Firmer, and Shock-o-Rama's own Suburban nightmare) and director Richard Griffin finally manage to break through the general malaise of independent zombie films and finally introduce one that hints at greatness. Our triad of anti-heroes are very flawed people: Torch is worried more about his pot supply and notoriety than his life, Sherry's hoping that the Lazarus coverage will be her Diane Sawyer-style breakthrough to the big time, and Roger is frustrated by his inability to get into Sherry's pants. Much as the government is turning the public eye away from the Lazarus threat to suit their own needs, the Channel 5 News team hopes to shine the spotlight right on the problem to suit theirs. Ultimately, while they claim to be doing this for "public safety" (again, in a peculiar parody of what the government is doing), deep down it suits their own needs. It's a pretty spot-on commentary on the bleak state of affairs in the news media nowadays (especially the decidedly right-wing Fox News), who use clever manipulation of the facts to develop a sort of patchwork truth to "feed the masses."

Unfortunately, the movie isn't without its problems. For one, the optical effects (fire, explosions, muzzle flares) are almost unbearably cheesy. Instead of renting guns that fire blanks, some rather unconvincing props were used instead, and the muzzle flares pasted on in post-production (same as explosions and flames). While this is understandable given the lean budget, there were a few times that a carefully planned camera angle and an off-screen burning could have achieved a better result than the bottom-of-the-barrel CGI that was used instead. Couple that with some thoroughly terrible acting at times (we're talking porno-bad acting), and the movie's rather solid efforts get clouded by a fog of amateurishness.

Shot on DV, Feeding The Masses looks as sharp as can be expected from the format: colors are solid and bold, light and dark are high-contrast, and skillful lighting achieves a variety of different effects. Despite using the same stock throughout, proper lighting manages to give the movie a boatload of different "feels." Audio is clear and loud, although the dialogue is muddy at times (more likely a result of mush-mouthed actors than poor mastering on Shock-o-Rama's part). Extras are quite beefy and include a trailer vault, commentary, a few extra short films from Shock-o-Rama (meh), and a few featurettes. Not bad.