Jaden Jordan
- Aug 11, 2021
- 4 min read

Feedback (2019)

TRIGGER WARNING: Intense, prolonged descriptions of sexual assault, and discrediting of victims as well as a character who's clearly a rape apologist.

The Breakdown: A truth-at-all-costs radio reporter finds himself in for a hell of a night when his sound booth is stormed by violent masked men with a point to make.

Watch If: You want a tense film that will, very likely, leave you unsure what it was trying to tell you.

Not If: Rape as the main topic of the film isn't something you're buckled in for.

SECONDARY FACTS

Overall Rating: 3.8

Length: 1:37

Country: Spain/USA

Language: English

Gore Factor: 3/5

REVIEW

THE QUICK AND DIRTY

Feedback is a tense, well-shot horror drama that captivates the viewer. It is, however, so intensely political, and still manages to muddle all of the points it touches on, with the glaring exception of media hypocrisy. However, viewing the entire film from the perspective of someone who is, at best, a rape apologist, left me feeling confused and disgusted.

PREMISE: 3

. There's a lot going on in this one, but at every turn, it does present with compelling originality in both story and setting. But to be fair, I am a complete sucker for Sound-booth horror movies. (I work operations and tech for conventions on the side, so anything related to that hits a particular interest of mine.)

However, I think when a significant amount of your film hinges on a brutal sexual assault, one which your main characters clearly doesn't have any respect for, it is vitally important that your tone and purpose be clear, and in this film, it wasn't.

ACTING: 4

A quick glance below and it's easy to see that this film is, as far as horror films go, exceptionally well cast. As Hollywood has taught us though- the most modern example that comes to mind being cats- a star-studded cast does not always a good film make.

In the case of this film, however, the entire cast delivered breathtaking performances. There was a gravitas to the film that could not exist without that incredible blend of talent.

AUDIO AND VISUALS: 5

Someone on this film had a crystal clear vision of what they wanted this film to look like, and they nailed it. The way it looks, sounds, tastes, from the first few minutes of the film, it hooks you. The combination of wide framing and bold-but-passive color palettes in juxtapose to the neon intensity of some of the accent gives the entire thing a visual aftertaste of cinematographic mastery. With an almost effortless perfection, Feedback offers an audio/visual experience to satisfy the senses.

ATMOSPHERE:4

This film manages to dropkick intensity into its viewer's attention, and maintain that momentum with grinding perpetuity throughout the entire film. To be honest, the only reason this section is a four and not a five, is because I very nearly didn't finish watching it. One more than one occasion, the dialogue of the characters left me uneasy and made me question whether or not the message of this film was one I needed to be consuming.

DELIVERY: 3

SPOILERS

I am not often of the mentality that a film needs to have a point. But there's something in this film that leaves me more than a bit conflicted.

This film has a heavy dose of "a character's words are not always what the writer is trying to say." The protagonist is a rape apologist, and maybe rapist (the film does tell us that he's [probably] a murderer [unless he was lying because that was clearly what the people about to kill his daughter wanted him to say], but leaves the rapist bit somewhat up in the air.) Over the course of the film, he blames rape victims, calls rape "just a mistake... that everybody makes", calls a rapist brave for admitting to what he did, even though he's only fessing up because otherwise he's going to get killed, and generally just leaves me with an upset stomach.

The main villain is a rape victim who tortures and murders innocent people in her quest for vengeance.

As mentioned above, for a good portion of the film, the role of the protagonist in the sexual assaults is incredibly vague, and there are more than a few moments where it does honestly seem like he's mixed up in other people's bullshit when he wasn't actually the guilty party.

Ultimately, whatever this film is trying to say gets lost in everything else it was saying at the same time. Since we can't really know anything about the main character (except that he thinks rape is a simple mistake that everyone makes, or at least tells his rapist friend that, and is, therefore, a shitty person) it's impossible to really know what the film was saying.

But that's the uncomfortable brilliance in it. Because everything is vague, you have to kind of parse the meaning out for yourself, and decide which ones you are going to take from it. Its a kind of vagueness designed to make viewers not only question the thing in front of them, but what the thing in front of them says to, and in its own way, about them and their own morals.