Lee Haven’s Welsh fantasy drama The Feast depicts a wealthy family on a palatial estate in the Welsh mountains. The family throws a small feast, inviting a cunning businessman and a struggling farmer to make a deal. Filled with mythological metaphors, the film explores human greed thematically. To gain wealth, the family exploits nature. But nature has its own means of punishing the wicked. For much of the narrative, it’s hard to understand the motivation behind the creepy housekeeper, Kadi. However, as the film comes to an end, the weaknesses are properly explained. In this article, you can read the explanation of the ending and find out how it all ends.
Why did the family invite the Euro and the Mayor?
Glenda belonged to the community (on which the estate was built) and inherited 300 acres of land from her parents. A family friend, Euro, has helped small businesses find ways to make money with their assets. Glenda sold part of the land to the Euros, whose consortium used the land for mining. Glenda and Gwyn built the estate with funds received from the association. Simply put, they gained wealth by exploiting and selling natural resources that did not belong to them.
While exploring for minerals, the drilling rig went deeper than usual and unearthed a cave in the area, Euros said. This place was 30 meters from the border between Glenda’s lands and Mayr’s farm. Euro believed that the veins of these caves run through the land of Mer, and therefore wanted to make a deal with her to drill them. But the Mayor was skeptical.
The spectacle was called “The Rise”. According to Mayr, it was a curse. Legends emphasize that creatures slept in these caves and should not be disturbed. As soon as the Mayor discovered that the euro wanted to dig up the Rise, she quickly left the estate, violating all possibilities of the deal. Little did the Mayor know that Euro and his company had already drilled the Rise and awakened the damned creature.
What was the scheme of the murder?
In the first episode of the movie, a rig was shown digging deep “Rise”. Loud drilling machines destroyed the caves in which the mythological creature lived. This stance awakened the curse, and soon the driller felt blood gushing from his ears.
The curse punished people in the same way that they destroyed nature. For example, a worker heard a high-frequency sound equal to the loudness experienced by the Earth when drilling into it with drilling machines. Gwyn constantly heard these high frequencies throughout the film because he brought these loud machines to these peaceful mountains. To get revenge, Cady or the curse stuck a small piece of sharp steel in Gwyn’s ear to kill him, just like he used to push drilling rigs into the Earth.
The curse was killing other people because of their karmic debt. During an intimate meeting, Gweyridd, accused of raping his patients in the hospital, was killed by Qadi. Similarly, Guto, who was chopping down tree logs at the beginning of the film, had his leg cut off by Gweyridd with the same axe. From the point of view of nature, logs are parts of the body of a tree, and although they do not scream, they are also living beings.
Under a spell, Glenda gave the leg to the Guto Euros, who ate it like a wild animal. It is symbolic that Glenda sold her lands to Euro, who, like a greedy creature, ruthlessly exploited the children of mother nature. To pay for her sins, Kady forced Glenda into the service of her offspring, property that actually belonged to her.
In the last chapter, “What’s Left After You Take It All?” Kadi made Glenda shoot the euro. Glenda was haunted by the death of her family and the sins she had committed. Cady forced Glenda to commit suicide.
Who was Kadi? What’s the curse?
More precisely, Qadi is not a ghost, but a curse. Her character was inspired by Welsh mythology (Blodeuwedd) and she represented Mother Earth herself. She reached the body of Kadi, who died in a car accident. When Mayor returned to the manor for the second time, she told Glenda that they had pulled Cudi’s car out of the lake. Mayr pointed out that the curse needed a body to live in, and thus the curse took possession of Qadi’s body.
When Kadi arrived at the estate, her hair was wet, probably from falling into the lake. When she touched the white sheet, she soiled it. As she moved, she left grains of earth behind her, as if the soul of mother earth was walking with her. The picture shows Kadi eating the earth, and in another episode, she is hugging the roots of a tree. There were many visual effects in the films that suggested that whatever the curse was, it belonged to nature and was meant to protect it.
The two rabbits Gwyn found in the woods were probably a trap set by Cudi. She was very sensitive to the sounds and death of the wild. She couldn’t stand the bodies of rabbits while Glenda insensibly skinned them. However, as the guests feasted on these rabbits, they felt human hairs getting stuck in their throats. These strands of hair probably belonged to Kadi, and this could mean that the guests feasted on the human body, not rabbits.
In one scene, Kadi yanked thick strands of hair out of Gweyridd’s throat, almost suffocating him. At that moment, Kadi saved Gweyriddu’s life because she had already made the decision to punish him. The method of punishment was described when Gweyridd accidentally cut himself with a razor, an act influenced by Qadi.
Explanation of the ending of “The feast”
As soon as Kady arrived at the estate, she fell in love with the painting in Glenda’s house. She saw her home, Rise, and smiled. The curse lived near the farm of Glenda’s parents, and it is possible that she heard or knew them. Cady hummed the song that Glenda’s mother sang for her.
Growing up on a farm, Glenda aspired to a wealthy lifestyle. And in her greed, she sold her parents’ land, but she felt no remorse that people like the euro ruined it. Mayr noticed that her behavior had changed and emphasized that her mother would be ashamed to see her like that. Not only Glenda’s mother, but Mother Nature was ashamed of the actions of one species that lived on Earth. Hence, Nature came seeking revenge in the form of Qadi.
In the end, Kadi killed every member of the family and their prestigious guest, Euro. After she got her revenge, the curse returned to its final resting place, i.e. the Rise, the drilling site that started the movie.
In the last shot, Cudi was walking towards the drilling site in bloody clothes. She looked up at the sky and smiled, feeling satisfied. But then she looked into the camera and felt grief, as if people forced her to kill.
