Eat Locals (2017) Review

After watching Double Date the other week I fancied some more British horror comedy and luckily for me right next to it on Sky cinema was this one. The cast looked pretty decent, it even has Daredevil in it! The premise of some sort of vampire film was enough for me to give it a go. A Sunday afternoon spent watching British comedy horror is bordering perfection!

Director – Jason Flemyng

Writer – Danny King

Stars – Freema Agyman, Adrian Bower, Billy Cook, Charlie Cox, Mackenzie Crook, Annette Crosbie, Tony Curran, Dexter Fletcher, Ruth Jones, Eve Myles and Vincent Regan

Budget – $618,000 estimated

Tagline – It’s Time To FEED

IMDB.com Link

Sebastian arrives in a small town in the middle of nowhere, he encounters two little shit kids in the films first and successful attempt at humour. He’s soon picked up by the cougar looking Vanessa although it’s pretty clear that she’s a vampire. Sebastian thinks he’s in for the ride of his life as she drives him off to a secluded farm house out in the sticks. When he arrives there he’s greeted by a group of people who all seem pretty keen to meet him. Sebastian assumes he’s been invited to some sort of sex party but it’s much worse or better depending on how you look at it.

Turns out it’s a council meeting of the British vampire over lords, they’re there to sort out various business. Most importantly they’ve looked into Sebastian’s history and he’s got “good blood” so instead of eating him they want to make him a vampire as well. He’s not too keen and as soon as one vampire disagrees and votes against turning him it’s time for Sebastian to die, so the chase begins!

Luckily for him there’s a highly trained group of Vatican backed vampire slayers surrounding the farm house. This is enough to let him begin his escape, what the vampire slayers don’t realise is just how many vampires they are dealing with. There’s some double crossing from everyone as all three sides battle for survival. Can the vampires take out the group that’s after them or will they kill and catch the vampire they want?

The Good

• The cast is strong in this film, Eve Myles as Vanessa is as good as she has been in Torchwood and Broadchurch.
• Billy Cook who doesn’t even have a picture on imdb played Sebastian perfectly, he’s a really likeable guy who’s been caught in a really shitty position.
• Ruth Jones and Dexter Fletcher are great as the held hostage couple who’s home has been commandeered by the Vampires.
• The double crossing that comes from all sides does add a good flavour of unpredictability to the film.
• The action and chase scenes are pretty good fun.
• I enjoyed the ending.

The Bad

• The humour starts off so well but gradually gets worse as the film goes on.
• It’s made clear that vampires are tough bastards and one of them is an old woman, to me it seemed a missed opportunity to have her savage several soldiers.
•  I know 90 minutes or so isn’t enough to reveal every aspect of every character but I felt some more background information about the various vampires would have made the film better.

This isn’t a bad film but it’s not great either, if you have some time to spend it’s worth a watch but I wouldn’t go out of your way to watch it. The cast needed a better script and the action and blood should have been upped a notch or two, however maybe this just wasn’t possible with the limited budget. I think this falls into being a very average film that could have offered so much more.

Overall Rating – 6/10