There are two species of beastie horror: your robust, reality-tethered monster movie starring a hungry shark, rogue crocodile or big snake, and the more supernatural kind in which the malevolent entity is not human, but perhaps more human-ish – your Babadooks, Bughuuls and Nosferati. It Feeds is in the latter category, about a shadowy thing whose MO is attaching to people and, per the title, feeding on them. He’ll seem familiar if you’re au fait with the likes of The Conjuring and Insidious, but he is at least neatly realised by the FX team.
Heading the human cast is Ashley Greene, known to Twilight fans as peppy clairvoyant vampire Alice Cullen. She is once more tapping into the supernatural here as psychic psychiatrist Cynthia Winstone, who is able to perceive the entity and is terrified of getting involved – although given the demands of the genre, we know that she will have to eventually. Also reporting for duty is former X-Man Shawn Ashmore, playing a twitchy father whose daughter (Shayelin Martin) is seeking deliverance from entity-based longueurs.
In 2015, the breakout horror hit It Follows creeped audiences out via a supernatural game of tag with a shape-shifter whose attentions were sexually transmitted. It Feeds isn’t officially related but, in both its title and the idea of an unknown thing targeting people in a particular sequence, there are echoes. One for the jump-scare crowd, It Feeds is light on gore but heavy on the dark spooky wraith guy with thin, sinister fingers. It may not stick around in your memory with the persistence demonstrated by the entity towards its victims, but it passes the time chillingly enough.
• It Feeds is on digital platforms from 12 May.
