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 Feast isn't the least bit artful, but it is gleefully gruesome, which might be all one can ask of a no-budget monster movie. As the film opens, a freaked-out stranger bursts into an isolated desert tavern to warn the dozen or so people inside that man-eating creatures, possibly from another planet, are heading their way. Viewers of the reality series Project Greenlight — that's the one where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck choose a first-time director to film the screenplay of a novice writer — know Feast is the long-shelved byproduct of the show's final season, and that its endearingly timid director of choice, John Gulager, along with his harried crew, couldn't decide what form their onscreen demons should take. That probably explains why they appear, at various points in the movie, to be horny gremlins or the wayward progeny of the creature from the Black Lagoon. They're vicious, though, and although most of the action sequences are too dark and frenzied to track, Gulager and screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Welton have come up with some wittily nasty moments, such as the yanked-out eyeball scene, and a creature versus pissed-off-mom showdown that's gooey and gross. They should have premiered this movie at a Midwest drive-in.

Now playing at a couple of local theaters