Five young adults are about to find themselves in a fight for their lives, pitted against evil itself! While on vacation in Chinatown, one of the five makes a seemingly innocent albeit ignorant mistake and soon all of them will realize the cost of such an inconsequential action. A stranger appears to help them, but is this too little, too late? Live Feed is directed, written, produced by Ryan Nicholson who also designed the special fx and prosthetics. It´s easy to dismiss Live Feed as a low budget rip off of Eli Roth´s Hostel and comparisons are inevitable and in my opinion Live Feed is what Eli Roth´s Hostel did not dare to be. Really bloody, nasty and dirty. Hostel is too polished to put it simply. It may have better actors, special fx team, catering companies and everything that comes with Hollywood but it is ultimately quite tame. In my mind a film isn´t automatically better just because it has a big company and a lot of money behind it.
The plot in Live Feed is simple and predictable. The pacing is good but the acting is of the lower mark and sometimes downright horrible. The soundtrack is pretty bad and feels homemade but it could be intentionally made that way but it fails to create a creepy moody atmosphere. Some of the editing seems a little off/odd.. The low budget is evident throughout the entire movie.
Most of the special fx is not very good although there are some effects that looks really good. The main selling point, which I like, is the tone and that the scenes we are treated are dark and brutal and there is a tone of dark humour.
It´s obvious that the budgetary constraints has influenced the production and Ryan Nicholson have stated that a director´s cut of film with the title Live Feed: The CAT III Edition with extended sex/violence, audio remastered in 5.1 surround sound with special features revisiting "The Venus Theatre", interactive "Live Feed's" and a sneak peek at "Live Feed 2" will be released sometime in the future. It was originally supposed to be released in the fall of 2008 but has been postponed several times..
Rating 4½ out of 7. I liked the movie, it´s pretty good, actually I liked this better than the over-rated Hostel. Live Feed dares to go further than Hostel but unfortunately it suffers from its low budget. I look forward to seeing more of Ryan Nicholson.
This review is of the unrated cut. Below is a teaser poster for Live Feed: The CAT III Edition.
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