Director: Jason Flemyng
Cast: Charlie Cox, Mackenzie Crook, Tony Curran, Freema Agyeman, Eve Myles
Running Time: 94 mins
Rating: 15
Release Date: 1 September
A group of vampires meet up in a farmhouse in the countryside for a meeting. They quickly realise they are not alone and must face a group of soldiers who are determined to destroy them.
Eat Locals is apparently supposed to be a comedy horror, a genre many British people love thanks to films like Shaun of the Dead and Attack the Block. This falls on the bland end of the spectrum, offering little more than a few chuckles and a basic level of violence. With a host of recognisable faces, you’d expect something special here, but unfortunately the film just seems empty and… funnily enough, lifeless.
Offering nothing particularly special or entertaining for comedy or horror fans, Eat Locals just churns along doing its thing until it’s over and you instantly forget everything you’ve watched. The only shimmer of personality was from relative newcomer Billy Cook, who provided all of the flashes of humour, albeit being very sparse.
It’s quite easy to forget Eat Locals is advertised as a comedy, there’s very little to remind the audience of this for at least the first half hour. The attempts at humour begin to be embarrassing as they consistently fall flat. From terrible one-liners to a series of bizarre references to Margaret Thatcher, Eat Locals is tonally all over the place. The rather tame violence and look of the vampires themselves mean there is nothing really to get out of this film. For a brief moment, however, there is an exciting action sequence in a barn that injects a bit of life into the plot – this quickly wears off after the fight scene ends and we go back to boring conversations and nonsensical plot points.
Overall, Eat Locals is a terribly boring film that tries to do something a little different, but sacrifices entertainment instead. With a collection of well-recognised actors doing their best to inject some life into the film, the bland storyline and lack of exciting plot points makes for a dull experience.
