License:
Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike

by Blender Dumbass

Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".

Steven Spielberg directed some rather intense movies throughout his career. He made Duel in 1971 about a maniac truck driver. He made a blog-buster sensation Jaws in 1974. And he made films like Schindler's List and War of the Worlds that could be considered horror films. But he never did a true, scary horror film. My mother used to say that "Steven Spielberg is too sentimental to make truly scary movies". But that statement isn't true about his daughter Destry. 2025 film by Destry Allyn Spielberg Please Don't Feed the Children shows that she is capable to rival fucking Eli Roth if she wants to.

Technically speaking Please Don't Feed the Children is a slasher film. We have a group of teenagers that are killed off one after another. But unlike other films in similar genre, Destry's film is more fucked up. First of all she isn't afraid of using the Lars Von Trier technique, of murdering children, right there on screen. And I'm not talking about the teenagers. I'm taking about like 8 year olds. There is a moment where the little sister of our main character gets shut in the head. And we see it. And then later she has a dream sequence where this little sister comes to her with a huge bloody wound in her head, where the bullet went in. c:0

It is not the same thing as what Steven Spielberg did with Schindler's List. When kids are killed in that film, he is not indulging in the "fetish" of bloody guts. He is trying to be respectful to the victims. And therefore, while the subject matter is grim, the image itself is not as grim. While Destry tries to fuck up the audience.

Still with all that, Destry didn't go as far as Lars Von Trier on The House that Jack Built. There, the child murders are first of all, not brief, like in Please Don't Feed the Children. And also Lars is indulging in corrupting of audience trying to frame the murders as "good", or at the very least as "not that bad actually", which fucks you up from multiple directions all at once.

On the surface you could think of this as a Zombie apocalypse movie. We have a zombie virus and everything. But the twist is that "kids" ( or humans below the age of 18 ) have apparently no symptoms of said virus, while they can still spread it around. From one side, it could be read as an allegory for Covid, which has very little effect on youth, and is very dangerous for old people.

But then as the movie progresses you understand that it is not quite an allegory for Covid but more an allegory for discrimination. Specifically the movie appears to be about age-discrimination. And more specifically about discrimination again children. In the beginning there is a voice over line which was rather funny to me. It said "The adults hated us of that, they blamed us for the outbreak and took away our freedom". As if you had "freedom" to begin with lol... But aside from the slightly weird writing, this is kind of interesting. The movie is literally about two groups: 18+ year olds and 18- year olds. And both groups hate each other. The adults hate kids for spreading the Zombie virus. And kids hate the adults for hating on kids. This is some straight up perfect understanding of what it is like to be a teenager.

On its own it is already interesting. But it is borderline asking for a psycho-sexual analysis, due to the director of the film Destry Spielberg's involvement in Paul Thomas Anderson's film Licorice Pizza. And due some rather nasty conspiracy theories surrounding her father Steven, which I indulged myself into speculating about in my review of his film The BFG.

Now, first of all Please Don't Feed the Children has no sexual connotation what so ever. There is like one kiss between two of the teenagers, but it never goes anywhere beyond that. And both of them look to be at least 16. So it is a relatively normal thing for them to do. There are a few scenes where girls are ordered to be undressed by the Baba Yaga character ( Michelle Dockery ). Which could be read as psycho-sexual. And Destry straight up steals a scene from Schindler's List ( of the mass shower, which at first appears to be a gas chamber ), which in Steven's film has some fucked up imagery. But here it is not sexual in nature. It is more just simply terrifying.

If you think about it, The BFG also had no actual sex involved. There was a similar threat that the little girl might get eaten. And there were some psycho-sexual elements, like the little girl in green goo all over her, or the "shower" scene / changing scene, which Steven made sure will be Kosher. So The BFG is roughly as Kosher as this Please Don't Feed the Children. Minus the blood.

And something like Steven Spielberg's AI: Artificial Intelligence, which on the surface is about a little boy madly in-love with a woman, specifically covers its ass in the very beginning, distinguishing a love of a child, from the love of a lusting man. Purifying the image, removing the creepiness of it, making the film more successful in the end of the day at "corrupting the audience".

Now specifically Licorice Pizza, which, if you remember, is about a 15 year old boy, madly in love with a 25 year old worker of the school. And where there is a hint of her being not his only adult girlfriend, in a scene with none other than Destry herself, playing one of those adult girlfriends, you start to wander: Why is her first cinema picture about age-discrimination? And why specifically teens, which are roughly the same age as the boy in Licorice Pizza, are the ones being discriminated against? What is she trying to do here? What is she trying to say?

Let's break it down. So we start with Zoe Colletti's 16 year old character Mary, who is attempting to board a bus to Mexico, to escape a literal manhunt on her, because she is underage. She is stopped by a 13 year old boy Jeffy ( Dean Scott Vazquez ), who argues that this attempt might not be safe, before it turns out to be true, and we get a little action scene as two of them are trying to get away from literal cops.

Right from the start the movie shows insane discrimination dynamic between the adults and the minors in the film. Literally the police is hunting "free" children, for the very reason that they are trying to be "free". They have a boogieman excuse to do so. In the real world it could be drugs or sex or alcohol. But in the world of the movie it's Zombies. Or how the movie cleverly tries to avoid you knowing about it being a zombie film, "cannibals". Yeah. Zombies in the film are simply called "cannibals".

But here is the thing. If the film ended on the fact that Zombies didn't exist, it would have been a shallow example of age-discrimination. But Zombies do exist in the film. Like drugs, sex, or alcohol exist in the real world. Yet, despite all that, the movie is still firmly against the idea of discrimination. Even if the reason for it ( or the boogieman ) is still there.

As if Steven with The BFG, PTA with Licorice Pizza, Luc Besson with Leon: The Professional, Maïwenn Le Besco with Polisse and Destry with Please Don't Feed the Children all came to the same conclusion: yes the life is hard, or as Leon says to Matilda "It's always like this". And yet despite that, it doesn't mean that we should take the freedom of our kids away. Even if the boogieman is very scary indeed.

Happy... wait a second...

I just rambled about what I think the movie means for a long time, but forgot to talk about the quality of the film in general. Recently I watched Jordan Scott's film A Sacrifice which I found to be kind of terrible from the script department and above average from the directing department. As you know Jordan Scott is a daughter of another big film-director Ridley Scott. So we can perhaps compare the two films.

Destry Spielberg is way more capable that Jordan Scott when it comes to the camera. She literally directs the shit of this movie. She isn't Steven Spielberg quite yet. If we take cinematic language as a language, she can speak it well, but she cannot yet write poetry with it, like what Steven is doing. The editing is a bit stiffer and knows less what it wants while with Steven Spielberg every shot transition is a masterpiece in and of itself. c:0

But if comparing the direction of the camera between Destry and Jordan, Destry is a fucking master. While Jordan uses a tripod. As in, Jordan Scott's shots are kind of too clean, which makes them boring looking. They are not technically terrible shots. They are perfectly professional. But Destry Spielberg's shots are exciting. She does interesting stuff with the camera. In a few instances I found Destry stealing her father's shots. Like there was a shot that I remember from Adventures of Tintin, where the character is moving from one side to another looking for something and the camera moves into their direction, passing by a silhouette of someone scary on the foreground. Or the aforementioned shower scene, which was yanked out of Schindler's List.

I read some reviewers dislike towards Destry's direction. I don't think they know what they are talking about. Maybe they are trying to push her down because they feel like she is benefiting from nepotism or something. But think about it. Jordan Scott's film was produced by Ridley Scott at Ridley's own production company "Scott Free". That is way more nepotism than what Destry comes through. Steven Spielberg had nothing to do with Please Don't Feed the Children. The film is not produced by "Amblin Entertainment" or "Dream Works". Steven Spielberg is not one of the producers. Destry did it herself. Yes, there is a possible thing that her name had something to do with how easy it was for her. People hear "Spielberg", people go crazy about it. Her sister Sasha even changed her name to "Buzzy Lee" to get even farther away from nepotism. But frankly I don't see much nepotism. c:0

The best advantage Destry has is that she grew up with fucking Steven Spielberg around her. So she could ask him, why this shot, or why that shot. But is it nepotism if a good writer teaches his child to speak the language, and then the child writes well? If it is not, and Steven showed or explained to Destry something about film-making, it was just normal thing a parent should do. And it is a good thing. I totally enjoyed the camera-work in the film, because the camera work is genuinely fantastic.

Now there is merit in reviewers disliking the writing of the film. The script was written by Paul Bertino. And he isn't remotely as terrible of a writer as whoever wrote A Sacrifice. But the movie isn't perfect. Some of the dialogue is cringe-worthy. Some of the scenes seem a bit forced. But on the whole, the film works way the hell better than A Sacrifice. In anything, the film is kind of on a similar level as Steven Spielberg's TV movie from 1971 called Something Evil. And if we consider Please Don't Feed the Children as Destry's Something Evil than I suppose, there is a lot of good stuff to expect from her moving forward. c:0

I really wander now, what Destry's Duel, Destry's Jaws, Destry's E.T. and Destry's Schindler's List would look like...

...Hacking!!!


0

Find this post on Mastodon

Find

  Troler c:0




I'll pass. Unless...



It seems like Destry is trying to show the world she is a competent film-maker.



In Plato's "Republic" it is said great men have terrible children. Since they are so cooped with the work, their children grow without much of the support of their fathers.




Having read the article, I am still going to pass on the film.

Post