Feeders 2: Slay Bells (1998) by The Polonia Brothers

Director: The Polonia Brothers

Year: 1998

Country: USA

Alternate Titles: N/A

Genre: Creature Feature

Plot:

Preparing for the holiday season, a family man trying to get through the day finds himself and his family in danger when a race of aliens continues their invasion of Earth, forcing him to have to discover their plans and stop them before they overtake the world for their own feeding ground.

Review:

This one turned out to be a pretty solid sequel. One of the better elements of this one is the enjoyable atmosphere created by mixing the cheesy tone of the original with a Christmas aesthetic. Making the new entry a holiday-set effort that focuses on the family’s holiday plans while being forced to turn it all upside down for the exploits of the invasion taking place is a pretty fun move allowing for the same cheesy alien effects and gore to mesh quite well within the wintery setting even before the outlandish concept of Santa and the elves comes into play. This does occur quite late in the film which requires a bit of waiting around to get to that point but it’s not nearly as noticeable as it could’ve been and allows for some fun getting this section of the film spelled out until then.

As well, the film works remarkably well outside of these factors with the use of a more widespread sense of the invasion taking place in the community. With a bigger focus on rampaging through the area attacking more victims and taking place in the homes of more people, which are all more suspenseful than expected, this feels more structured and genuine-feeling as the exploits taken here provide for a fun time. This still suffers from the same issues as before with the low-budget being plainly obvious not just with the creatures’ puppetry-based creation being obvious but also the cheesy gore and bloodshed alongside the low-rent computer graphics that make this feel decidedly cheap. It’s not as bad as it could’ve been but still lowers this one quite a lot.

Overview: ***/5

A highly enjoyable sequel that’s an improvement over the original, this one manages to be the right mix of cheesy and silly that should make this far better than it should be. Fans of this type of shot-on-video aesthetic or of the creative crew’s previous output will have the most to enjoy here while most others out there should heed caution.