Hello and Hallo-welcome to another #ThrowforwardThursday, where we sit down to watch something not only new to us, but new to the cinemas! Your join your bloggers, Andy and Lilly, as they sit down with some very old friends to discuss new business.
Today’s Film Offering: Eat Local
Lilly: It’s a vampire film, it’s a vampire film!
Andy: We’ve review vampire films before–last year’s Thursday theme was vampire films!
Lilly: Whatever, it feels like a century since we’ve talked vampires!
Andy: You wrote about Nosferatu earlier this month…
Lilly: Yeah, well, Hallowfest doesn’t really cover vamp…
Andy: And we did a whole day of vampire movies last year.
Lilly: ANYWAY.
Eat Local is the story of the vampire council of the UK getting together (as they do every fifty years) to go over old and new business alike, such as if anyone is going over their quota of kills each year, or if they desire to bring a new member into the fold. But they aren’t the only ones out in the middle of the countryside. A group of soldiers (plus one priest) have gathered in an attempt to rid the church of those turbulent bloodsuckers.
Andy: Of course, all this isn’t immediately spelled out for you. The genius and quite a lot of the comedy comes from how muted everything is. A lesser film, for example, would awkwardly exposit who was in charge. Here, it’s all in how the characters interact.
As you can guess, the dialogue is razor tight. There is, for example, a disagreement about ‘territories’. Do we find out where all these territories are? Not explicitly, because it’s not necessary that we know. Anyone interested in writing, specifically how much you can strip out of a screenplay, should check this out.
Lilly: You get a lot of information via implication in this film, definitely. Even with the use of a human character to explain vampire issues and limitations that can easily be overused, a lot of what we learn about the vampires comes from either their conversations with each other or just seeing what happens when, for instance, one is staked. Not everything gets explained–like the territories, as Andy mentioned, nor why the council was ‘always’ eight–but who cares!
I loved a lot about the film. The acting was fantastic (but look at the cast!), the premise was intriguing (but look at the monsters featured!), and it had something for us both to enjoy (sexy vampire politics AND soldier stuff for Andy). I don’t want to spoil things, since I want people to go and watch it and discuss, so to use a comparison it is like Dog Soldiers if you got to see the werewolves’ side of things.
Andy: That’s an excellent comparison! Also, props to this movie for having a positive ‘gypsy’ (Romani) character–one of the most hated demographics in the UK!
Lilly: Seriously, that was one of the most supernatural things about this vampire film, the more than two-dimensional depiction of a Romani. Good job, writers!
Andy: All in all, I really enjoyed this one. It’s rarely laugh out loud funny, and there are definitely horror comedies I like more, but this is a fun little addition to the genre.
Lilly: It brings a vampire house siege council meeting to the table of the horror comedies, and hey, that’s not something I’ve seen in action before, so why not! You know, frankly, more countries should get in on the new horror comedy vampire film wave! We have New Zealand’s What We Do in the Shadows, we now have the UK throwing in with Eat Local…Come on!
It’s a recommendation from us! Go and check it out and let us know what you think!
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