Eat Locals (2017) directed by Jason Flemyng. Starring: Charlie Cox, Freema Agyeman, Tony Curran, Vincent Regan, Eve Myles and Mackenzie Crook.

During my summer in France in 2017 I came across this film on Netflix and was intrigued by the stellar cast.  This is a vampire comedy horror with very well-known and talented from the UK that I’ve seen in many films and TV series.

Synopsis: Facing difficult times and with their glory days long gone, the eight undisputed British vampire overlords gather up for their semi centennial meeting, however before the break of dawn, there will be blood and corpses, lots of them.

First of all this film has a lot of dark humour and something called ‘gallows humour’, it is a form of humour about very unpleasant, serious or painful circumstances. Any humour that treats serious matters such as death, war, disease and crime, in a light, silly or satirical fashion.  

This might affect or be confusing to people unfamiliar with vampire and horror films.

The film starts off with the big eight vampire bosses meeting in a farm house far away in the countryside. Unfortunately a group of humans find out about this meeting and surround the farm with a militia. The rest of the film is violent, gory and hilarious, it should even be re-titled ‘Vampires vs Soldiers’. There are scenes very similar to a typical home invasion film with guns and killings. 

The vampires are trying to recruit a new member with the unsuspecting gullible Sebastian who Vanessa (Eve Myles) seduces and invites to the farm. She even picks him up in a car with a license plate that reads ‘Bram 1’, a funny little nod to Bram Stoker. The action and killing scenes are fun and the characters well developed. The vampires are all different and with their own personality and witty dialogue. There’s even an old lady named Alice  (Anette Crosbie) who uses her old age to trick the attacking soldiers and lure them as she slowly walks outside using a walker while one of Thatcher’s speech is playing in the background. There’s typical British humour and witty dialogue, the character of Vanessa explains that she likes her food ‘organic’.  To add more to the craziness of the film an Asian vampire attacks using Kung Fu moves!

The actors are brilliant of course with the sexy and cute Charlie Cox as a ‘vegetarian’ vampire who only feeds on animals, somehow I suspect that was intentional to make fun of ‘Twilight’. ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘Torchwood’ star Freema Agyeman and Eve Myles are perfect as deadly female vampires. While the other old vamps are arrogant assholes such as the great Tony Curran, not unfamiliar to vampire roles, given he was Markus in Underworld: Evolution.  Unfortunately these old vampires who are supposed to be at least thousands of year olds are not very smart when it comes to protecting themselves.

There is a serious lack of sex and nudity for a vampire film.

Overall the film is not super great but it is an interesting effort with the story in trying something different with the vampire genre and popular horror comedy tropes.  It remains a wacky funny and entertaining film.