Reaction & Review | Feed The Light

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to an all new Reaction & Review. Tonight, guys, I'm gonna be covering a Swedish horror film from 2014. That movie is "Feed The Light".

I'll be honest with you, guys, I know jack shit about this movie. The only things I know is that it's, well, a Swedish horror movie. And, from what I skimmed over on the back of the DVD case here, apparently it's from a Swedish filmmaker named Henrik Moller, which is also his directorial debut. So, I believe this marks the second Swedish filmmaker I'm gonna be taking a look at that isn't named Mats Helge Olsson. So at least that's something new.

Beyond that, guys, I don't know what to expect from this movie. I'm certainly hoping for it to be good. Though, so far, Swedish films haven't exactly had the best track record so far for this series. So I'm hoping this one will be able to break that mold here. I don't know if it will, but that's what I'm here to find out. And the only way I'm gonna find out if this movie is any good at all is if I shut up and I push play, and I'm gonna do that right now. So, without further ado, it's time to kick back, relax, and check out "Feed The Light".

7 minutes later

OK, I have a genuine question here. Well, a few of them anyway, but I'll stick with the topic for now. Why is this guy naked and why does he keep panting like a dog? And also, why is he in this woman's office? I'm really curious now and I'm not totally sure if any of them will get answered at all.

5 minutes later

Well, that's something new. I've never seen part of a mop disappear like that. I guess maybe this is part of that "sparkling dust" that's on the mop itself, which caused it to disappear the way it did. That was actually really interesting.

4 minutes later

O...K, that was genuinely fucking creepy as hell. And I'm going to assume that's what happens when you have too much sparkling dust on your hands. Never would've expected that at all.

10 minutes later

Oh, that's fucking tasteful. So the naked guy I mentioned earlier has Sara on the ground. And there's some kind of unknown liquid that's literally coming from his asshole. What the fuck am I watching?!

8 minutes later

So let me see if I understand this. You can age faster in just a few hours if you're unlucky. And part of that has to do with this light that is always around. I'm not totally sure how that all works, but I will say that it is at least interesting.

15 minutes later

I will say this, guys, I'm really digging this movie's shadow effects. I'm guessing they're CG, but I still really like how they're being implemented. It looks really creepy and cool-looking at the same time. I'm really liking it.

20 minutes later

Sorry, guys, for not saying very much. It's just that the movie hasn't really given me much to work with at the moment. I will say, though, that I am intrigued on where the rest of this film is going.

The Review

OK...well, guys, that was "Feed The Light". Let me go ahead and shut the movie off now...OK. So, before I get into the review itself I am gonna say that I did kinda enjoy the movie. It's a very unique film, one in which I haven't really experienced in quite a while. However...this is where I'm gonna sorta interject here, because as much as I enjoyed this film, I don't think I'm ever going to rewatch it again. And the reason why I say that is because all of the weird, creepy stuff that happens here isn't going to be as effective a second time. And it's not to say that the movie is a masterpiece of any kind. Far from it, the film is still kinda flawed. I just don't think that I'm gonna get that same experience as much as I did the first time around is what I'm trying to say.

Now let's get into this review here and first go over the writing. Writing in this movie is, well, a little bit lacking. I mean, premise wise, it's about a mother looking for her daughter after she gets taken to some mental institution. And throughout the whole ordeal, she is experiencing all of the weird things that are going on at this institution. A lot of it involves the Light that is heavily played up in this movie. I mean, no shit, it's in the title, but they *really* do play it up a lot here as the movie's main gimmick. I'll get more into that in a little bit, but as for the rest of the film's narrative, there's not much going on here. As most of the film has taken a back seat to all of it's weirdness. In essence, the movie is more or less an arthouse film. And as I said before, I'm not really a fan of those because they rely more on it's weird trippiness rather than having a cohesive narrative.

Which then brings me into one of the bigger problems this movie suffers from. The characters in this movie are just not very interesting. Our main character, Sara, is suppose to be someone you're suppose to get behind as the film's protagonist, but she really doesn't have much of a personality. She really only cares about finding her daughter. The thing is, her background is rather sketchy. We learn from the boss of this institution that Sara had lost her daughter in a custody battle with her, I think, ex-husband, Jon, though I don't recall if they were married or not. But anyway, for some reason, Jon, took Sara's daughter, Jenny, to this institution, and it's never really explained why. It was sorta implied that she may have some connection to the Light, but it's never really expanded upon. And for some reason, the boss knows about this, but doesn't understand why Sara is looking for her daughter if she ended up losing custody rights to her. That part is never explained and it makes me feel like there was suppose to be more to it that never made it to film. I don't know if that's the case or not, but it just feels really weird to me.

As for our other characters, Jon is, like I said, Sara's ex-husband, or possibly boyfriend, and aside from his questionable motivation to bring Jenny to this institution, you learn that he's been kept there for a good amount of time. He doesn't know how long exactly he's been at this institution, but he did try to film some documentary with a colleague of his, who ended up aging faster than he ever did before and it was implied that he ended up being killed. Which, OK, that in itself is weird, but the thing about Jon is that you really don't know anything else about him, beyond everything I just told you guys. He's just been kept there in this institution as a victim, apparently. And then you have Martin, who's implied to have lost his family to this place, but aside from that, the only kind of personality you get out of him is that he's stone faced for most of the movie. Now granted, you could argue that because he's been at this institution for so long that any emotion he may have once had is gone, but it still feels a little bit lacking, if you ask me.

One more thing I want to mention about the film's writing is how the film is being presented. You see, the whole movie is shot in black & white. And without going into any spoilers, the ending kind of explains why the whole movie was filmed like that. I say it *kind of* does, because they don't outright explain it to you. That being said, it's still a little bit on the confusing side because when these shadows tell Sara not to open the metal grate near the end of the film, they say that she will ruin everything. Now what exactly they mean by that, I don't know. My guess is that maybe they just want everything in darkness. Though that's just more theoretical than anything else. I could somehow be totally wrong there.

But yeah, guys, the writing in this movie is a little bit on the weak side. Not awful, mind you, just a little bit weak is all. Now the acting, I will say, is actually pretty good. Mind you, this is technically the first film I'm watching that comes exclusively with the Swedish dub, so I can only judge with what I've got there. That said, I still think the acting is pretty good. The only one who I felt was a bit weak was the child actress they got to play Jenny. Her facial expressions gives off the impression that she has no idea what she's suppose to be doing in this film. And it just stays that way with her throughout every scene that she's in. Granted, she's not in the film for very long, so I can't completely blast her performance here. Still though, she could've been better. The rest of the acting is perfectly fine though. And I can't add much else to it other than that.

Special effects in this movie are actually really good. The ones that are gonna stand out to you are the shadow effects. Now again, it's very well possible that they were done in CG, but they still looked really cool. The best way I can describe the shadow effects is that they remind me of a PlayStation 1 game called "Ico". It's the game where you, as a young boy, escort some lady out of her imprisonment from shadow monsters. The shadow monsters in "Feed The Light" remind me of how they looked like in "Ico", and I'm kinda happy that I remembered that game after so long. But setting aside that, the blood effects here are also pretty decent. Granted, there's not a lot here, but they're still pretty good overall.

Camerawork here is pretty good for the most part. Sound-mixing here is actually pretty decent. Music here is OK, though there really isn't much of it to begin with. Lighting here is actually the one thing that I can comment on the most because, as I mentioned earlier, the entire movie is shot in black and white. So you have a movie that's working with only two colors. And when I was initially watching it, part of me was curious to see how exactly they were going to blend in both aspects. And I will say that, for the most part, the lighting here is actually really solid. They really go all out in making sure the lighting is almost perfectly balanced. So whenever you get the brighter scenes, it's much more relaxing, while with the darker lighting, it gives off a really uncomfortable vibe that you're not sure what to expect from it. And it's here where the atmosphere of the movie really excels at because they have a near perfect balance of how well the lighting is used here. The only scenes that might have much darker lighting than usual is when they're filming in something resembling a cave. I'm not sure if it totally is or not, but still, the lighting there is good enough to where you can see what's going on. Which is totally cool to see. So yeah, guys, the lighting here is great, as is the rest of the technical work.

So when all is said and done, guys, am I able to recommend "Feed The Light"? I can probably say yes, mostly as a single viewing experience. I say this, mainly because all of dark weird shit that happens in this film is something that I'm not gonna get out of a second viewing because I'll see it coming. But if you enjoyed this movie enough to where you want to watch it on multiple viewings, then you go right for it. The movie is still a really unique film on it's own standards. And I would've not been able to say that had I not seen the movie for myself. And while I may not be interested in watching it again, I still did enjoy it as a once-over for myself. Now with that said, I mentioned the PS1 game, "Ico" earlier in my review, and I'm curious to see if it's actually available to download off my PS4. I haven't played that game since I played a demo of it back when Walmart use to do that sort of thing when I was a kid. So I'm gonna go see if I can get "Ico" on PS4 and see if my experience with it is just as good as it was back then.

Anyway, guys, with that, we come to the close of another Reaction & Review. Until next time, ladies and gentlemen, take care, and I will see you all later. Peace.