LIVE FEED

A group of dislikeable American teens visit China on vacation. Opening shots see them bickering amongst themselves and playing the occasional prank on one another to establish their general "wackiness".

Early scenes show their disgust at the local culture as they witness a market-stall butcher preparing to slay a dog in front of them. Hurrying away from the slaughter, they happen upon a lap-dancing club mere minutes after a policeman has been beaten and blowtorched in there by local Triads.

Oblivious to the preceding carnage, the dumb Yanks get drunk and abusive, ultimately managing to get on the wrong side of the Triad boss (Stephen Chang, JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE). Fortunately the group have already befriended the Chinese Miles (Kevan Ohtsji, THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT; ELEKTRA) who smoothes things over then persuades his visiting acquaintances to walk away without looking back.

Rattled for all of two minutes, the group then moves on to a porno theatre. For a short while events follow a predictable route - the group split into couples to snort cocaine, play more tricks on each other and, of course, fuck.

But when one couple are locked in a bedroom from the outside, the group begin to suspect that all is not well in their new surroundings.

Trapped in a dark building where no-one on the outside can hear their screams, the teens become eye candy for the aforementioned Triad boss and his girlfriends as they arrive at the theatre to watch their victims' fates via live webcams set up in each room.

Inexplicably, Miles stumbles across the theatre too. But can he save the surviving Yanks?

LIVE FEED will obviously draw comparisons to Eli Roth's larger-scaled HOSTEL. The premise - horny Americans arse about on Foreign soil then get killed on camera for a wealthy businessman's amusement - is too close for comfort, although director Ryan Nicholson (TORCHED) will no doubt have you believe he became aware of the same alleged websites that Roth based his flick on, at the same time.

Such a comparison brings inevitable pros and cons. The pros are the free publicity it brings (witness the quotes on the front cover of this release, "HOSTEL ... with snakes!", that will draw interest from Roth's fans), and the fact that reviewers are sure to mention LIVE FEED is similar, only gorier. Indeed, for a man who raised expectations for HOSTEL by promising it would be outlandishly bloody, Roth must be kicking himself after viewing Nicholson's altogether more splattery offering.

The big con is that HOSTEL boasts undeniably superior production values. Which means better acting, bigger set-pieces, a more attractive cast, more convincing FX, and better realised set designs. Both movies are equally vacuous in terms of subtext or social commentary, so this list is effectively what becomes important - and, for all its flaws, HOSTEL wins on all counts.

While LIVE FEED may be gory, it never approaches anything resembling tension or suspense. It also fails miserably at any apparent attempt to disturb. Whether this is down to the occasional moments of stupid, unsuccessful humour dissipating any potential atmosphere, or the fact that the characters are all one-dimensional whining victims-in-waiting, who knows. Maybe it's because Nicholson, best known as a make-up effects artist, has no interest in the human side of his story. Or it could be down to the fact that the low-grade digital shooting and constant changes in image clarity/aspect ratio prove to be too distracting.

The predictable plot soon runs out of ideas and then eventually descends into sub-Miike silliness, further ruining any chance this flick had of living up to the hype originally started on the Net by it's makers. Gory? Yes, with plentiful close-up shots of geysers of blood spewing from lacerated flesh. Nasty? No, not at all. There's no mean spirit here - there's no spirit at all. Hence the BBFC having no problem passing it uncut.

The picture quality is very poor on Film 2000's disc - as mentioned above, the aspect ratio keeps changing depending on the source material. If anything is consistent about the image, it's that it's overly dark and at times suffering from severe ghosting. Lighter scenes fare better, but these are few and far between. The main aspect ratio is 4:3.

The audio is English 2.0, and is an unusually loud mix. Still, it's clear and consistent throughout - a much better experience than the video transfer.

Extras begin with a commentary track from Nicholson, who talks fluently about his pet project, offering some insightful pointers on how certain set-pieces were conceived. His heart seems to be in the right place and I'd like to see him make something more worthwhile some day.

An 80-minute Making Of documentary is almost as long as the film itself. Shot on digital, ironically it looks slightly better than the main feature. There's loads of behind-the-scenes footage to appreciate here, as well as onscreen musings from just about everyone involved in the production. Interesting, but ultimately overlong and endurance-testing.

There's a short featurette offering a closer look at "Womb Service" - the SOV porno showing in the theatre in the main film. It's meant to be amusing, I guess, but it's no "See You Next Tuesday".

Rounding out the bonus features are a selection of deleted scenes and alternate scenes. I'll be honest, I didn't look at these. I think I can be excused!

Gory, yet ultimately forgettable low-budget shenanigans on a disc that's extremely generous with it's extras but offers an at-times-unwatchable transfer.

Review by Stu Willis