Tubi Tuesday: Eat Local(s) (2017)

Despite a chilly reception, “Eat Local” is a vampire horror comedy that may not rise to greatness but is far from the worst way to kill time.

For all the great horror comedies out there, great vampire comedies are surprisingly hard to come by.

There’s Vampire’s Kiss, but that’s only sort of a vampire movie anyway, and mostly funny for Nic Cage’s batshit performance. Fright Night makes the grade, and there’s always What We Do in the Shadows in its cinematic and televisual incarnations. Yet, you’d be hard-pressed to turn up too many more. 

Are vampires, with their arcane rules and existential inclinations, just too moody to truly be funny?

This week’s Tubi pick, 2017’s Eat Local (sometimes listed as Eat Locals), attempts to rectify this historical inequity with its own entry into the limited vampire comedy canon. But is it more Fright Night or more Dracula: Dead and Loving It?

After the script had been floating around for quite some time, Eat Local finally landed as the directorial debut of actor Jason Flemyng. Flemyng is a recognizable face in the genre world for his roles in Stardust, Kick-Ass, and George Romero’s underappreciated Bruiser. He also played Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, though the less said about that, the better. 

Flemyng was originally just going to produce, but after years of delays in getting the movie off the ground, he ended up in the director’s chair. The result was maybe not what anyone hoped, as Eat Local ultimately limped to a release and earned poor reviews, ending up as another curiosity in Tubi’s back pages.

To date, it remains Flemyng’s only time behind the camera as a director. 

Despite its less-than-stellar reception, a few things made me want to forge ahead with Eat Local anyway.

It’s helmed by an appealing character actor. It features several famous faces across the genre spectrum, from Dr. Who’s companion, Freema Agyeman, to Flemyng’s League costar Tony Curran, to Daredevil himself, Charlie Cox.

It’s a surprisingly stacked cast for such an overlooked movie, and it made me wonder if there was more to this thing than its reputation (or lack thereof) would suggest. 

So, is Eat Local worth your time, or does it deserve to shrivel up and blow away in the sun?

We open on an idyllic farmhouse in the East English countryside of Hertfordshire, as a local council of vampires convenes to discuss business, led by The Duke (Vincent Reagan). But even man-devouring vampires seem to have their limits, and they summarily execute one of their own for going over his feeding quota and preying on children, evidently a big no-no in their world. Naturally, this means a spot has suddenly opened up in their ranks.

Sebastian (Billy Cook) travels to the farmhouse to meet with his acquaintance Vanessa (Eve Myles) for what he hopes will be a sexy weekend in the country. Unbeknownst to him, Vanessa is a vampire who lured him there in the hopes of converting him. When Sebastian refuses, he’s forced to figure out how to not end up as dinner instead.

But these vampires aren’t alone in this rural locale.

Outside, a unit of soldiers watches from the tree line, tracking their movements with a thermal detector. Their objective is initially unclear, but they quickly realize they’ve got way more than they bargained for.

What follows is a sort of reverse Dog Soldiers, with a group of supernatural entities attempting to fight their way out of a farmhouse before sunset.

Eat Local is a pretty well-contained single-location story, at least until the vampires make their escape and the narrative and characterizations get really muddled.

The movie attempts to inject some satire of modern British consumer culture and our beauty-obsessed society into the mix, but it’s not really developed enough to fully hang together.

It’s never better than in its early going, watching these vampires gripe at each other with Sebastian as the odd guy out, trying to bluster his way out of becoming their next meal.

Still, despite some rather glaring flaws, Eat Local is a pretty entertaining movie, as long as you don’t expect too much out of it. Flemyng clearly knows how to work with actors, and the ensemble is very appealing, particularly Curran as the one who’s kind of an asshole, but you can’t argue that he can get shit done.

Veteran Scottish actress Annette Crosbie is also a lot of fun as a vampire whose sweet old lady exterior hides a vicious killer. 

Eat Local might not rise to the top of all-time vampire comedies, but I wouldn’t say it belongs at the bottom, either. Given how many lackluster ones are out there, that’s not the worst fate.