“Well, we know what they like to eat.” “Yeah… us.”

Justin’s rating: WELCOME TO EARTH! AGAIN!

Justin’s review: To properly prepare yourself for the experience that is Feeders, it’s vital that you come armed with the background of this flick. It’s 1996 and two filmmaking brothers take $500 and spend four days shooting a “campy throwback” to alien invasion B-movies. The final result is, against all odds, picked up by Blockbuster and distributed widely. Viewers who were high on alien invasion movies after just seeing Independence Day that summer ended up snatching Feeders off the shelves to make this objectively and subjectively terrible film Blockbuster’s top indie rental of the year.

We’ll leave its sequels for another day and focus on what a half-grand and a long weekend of filming could churn out, shall we?

Typically, this is the part of the review where the peasants rise up with pitchforks and torches to demand a plot summary — or else. No can do, unwashed masses of desperation. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that Feeders didn’t really have time to come up with a story in the traditional sense. If I was the guy who got paid to write back-of-the-box blurbs to get people to rent movies, I might be able to produce a sentence fragment and then resign my post.

Here goes: Menacing grey-skinned aliens beam down to a park and munch on the local yokels because…

That’s all I got. That’s all Feeders has for its complex world-building. Truly, this film and J.R.R. Tolkien’s amassed works are of comparable quality.

But that’s OK, because you’re not watching this for a plot. You’re here to point and laugh and feel slightly better about your lowly state in life. You may be eating leftover dog food before carpooling to your job as a telemarketer, but at least you’re not this pathetic.

Feeders is less an “alien invasion” flick and more an “aliens acting like my annoying little brother” tattle tale session. It caters to a very specific audience that wants to see the cast drive through a park, show off bristly facial hair, and be perturbed by little goofy puppets. But what puppets they are! The two-fingered aliens have a likable charm to their looks, especially when they’re jabbing people with probes and gnoshing on their faces. I mean, Mulder and Scully wouldn’t leave the office for this minor threat, but maybe their intern Steve would.

The real entertainment here is providing the audience with B-movie goofiness and absolutely atrocious production values to mock. Never in the history of cinema has $500 been stretched so far as to include every special effect that an 1980s camcorder could produce. My favorite is a toss-up between the super-fake camera lens clicker and the repeated subtitle telling the audience what time it was.

Scenes rapidly shift from a horror threat in one place to a light-hearted hike through picturesque woods in another. In between all of that, we’re treated to the interiors of several nondescript offices and homes, each more beige and boxy than the last.

The “actors” are another unexpected treat, especially when the camera inserts itself right into their slack-jawed faces and Bugle Boy jeans. Let’s just say that you’re not going to be too attached to any of these characters when the Feeders start making good on their name. Although one does wonder how a creature who weighs less than my cat and has no mouth can be constantly chowing down on beings 8,000% heavier than they.

It probably speaks to my non-existent standards and head trauma from recreating Home Alone scenes with my kids, but after seeing this micro-budget masterpiece, I am a die-hard Feedy for life. That’s what we call fans of the Feeders franchise. There are dozens of us! Dozens!

Intermission!

• Just in case you need to be reminded what a ’90s star screensaver looked like
• Hand-drawn doodles is a sign of high quality!
• This movie is big on mustaches
• From that camera POV, aliens are about three inches tall
• GAWK at those astounding beaming and camera effects!
• “We got to save our money for the ocean.”
• $1.09 for gas. I miss that, man.
• Oh the chemistry of that gas station flirting
• Aliens like to steal your tiny fish
• Just in case you wondered what time it was, this move will tell you. A lot.
• Well that guy died awfully fast after getting to the doctor
• “The park? My father is the head ranger, he’ll catch you.”
• Aliens see in photo negative
• Oh that beheading scene. Special effects Oscar win, here we come!
• The cast did not have money for nicer sneakers. You take what you can get, people.
• That girl just killed both aliens without even blinking. One with a hairspray can-blowtorch, no less.
• “It’s getting dark!” he says in the broad noon daylight.
• Exposed brains are covered in grape jelly
• Enjoy 20 minutes of these guys splitting up and slowly, so slowly, so very slowly checking out a house