“They are collectors of consciousness. You won’t miss your body.”
Paul Mantel (John Varesio) is home alone. His wife Svina (Catherine Johnson) and son Kenny (Angelo Varesio) are away visiting Paul's mother for a few days. Paul is a wanna-be writer working on his memoirs. That’s code for an unemployed schlub. Paul gets a package in the mail addressed to Tim Brown. Tim was the previous owner of the house. Tim died so there is no way to forward the package to him. Paul opens it up to see what it is. Inside he finds some dried leaves and what looks like either a cocoon or chrysalis.
Over night the cocoon opens up and whatever was inside is now loose in the house. Paul searches the house and finally finds an unusual looking bug. He gets some books from the library to try to identify what it is, but there is nothing in the books that matches his bug. It looks more like a cross between a shrimp and a nautilus than it does a bug. Paul keeps the bug in a glass jar in the garage and begins to talk to it. When he puts his ear up to the glass he hears something coming from the bug. Through trial and error Paul begins to communicate with the creature using some sort of mental telepathy.
By now his wife and son are home and Svina is beginning to see some changes in her husband’s behavior. Paul has been spending a lot of time in the locked garage working on what he calls a secret project. By now he is communicating with the bug which tells him to go to a specific area in the woods near a lake. In the woods he meets an alien creature that calls itself Shelia (Maria Varesio). Shelia calls him Tim Brown. Shelia tends a hive-like structure that contains larger human-size versions of the alien bug Paul has been communicating with. Using mind control Shelia puts Paul in charge of finding food for the alien brood. Human food.
Paul adopts the persona of Tim Brown when he is fulfilling his duties as gopher for the hive bugs. Soon several young women from the area go missing. Then Paul convinces a couple druggies that he is a casting director looking for extras for a horror movie. Paul takes them into the woods and soon they are bug food.
Things get a little dicey at home when Paul takes Kenny fishing and comes back alone. Svina is sure that Paul has done something to Kenny. To Paul, Svina has crossed a line of no return and she has no idea that she is next on the menu.
“It Came For Friendship But Found Food” was released in 2010 and was written, directed and produced by Guy Gilray. It’s sort of a home grown movie. Gilray only made two movies, this one and “Scream of the Sasquatch” 2006 which he also wrote, directed produced and even acted in. On both films he was also the cinematographer and editor.
The film premiered at the Big Bear Lake Horror Film Festival in 2010. No one from the cast or crew attended. Gilray let the film enter public domain in 2014. Since the film never made any money he decided that he would rather give it away than have it remain in obscurity. (Thank you) Although it’s not well known now, perhaps that will change.
Gilray designed and created all of the CGI effects on his Dell XPS 600 home computer. Considering Gilray is a novice at filmmaking I found the effects inspired. There were a lot of interesting parts to the film. The music score was another part that drew me in and kept my attention.
There are some bizarre parts to the film. There is discussion that Paul’s mother wanted to abort him before he was born and Paul’s best friend is a rock. Aside from those strange aspects of the film I found it fascinating.
I didn’t have any problem with the incongruity of which decade the film was based in. It appears that the movie is based in the fifties judging by the props and the black and white film. Yet, the dialogue is current to 2010. Sometime later Gilroy explained that the movie actually takes place in 2010 but Paul being a fan of retro technology surrounds himself with all things fifties. This is something he admits he didn’t make clear at the time. Notwithstanding his explanation, I liked the mix of time periods in the film. To me it added to the science fiction aspect of the story.
I can enjoy a homemade type movie if it well done or if it has at its core something special. This one does. I really liked the film a lot.