The Locals (2003)
[Reader disclaimer: spoilers will be discussed].
When I was a young, impressionable teen, my neighbour came over to watch horror films with me: I had a huge crush on her at the time and I was eager to see what her taste in gore was like. She brought over a few of her favourites, one being Lake Placid (1999) and one that I'd never heard of before: The Locals (2003).
I recently had to track this New Zealand b-movie down because I couldn't for the life of me remember its name, anybody who had starred in it or what year it came out. And there's probably good reason for that: the director (Greg Page) never went on to direct anything else and none of the actors proceeded to do anything notable, other than Dwayne Cameron who has starred in films with A-list celebrities like Nicolas Cage and Guy Pearce.
So The Locals focuses on Paul (Cameron) and Grant (Johnny Barker), two "bros" with a banter-filled friendship that conveys an uncharacteristically but welcomed tenderness to their characters. We often see lead men in horror films who are ham-headed and make nonsensical decisions, so it's actually refreshing to see these two interact in a playful yet caring way.
Paul decides to take a shortcut across the countryside for their trip and discovers two girls at the bridge who want the boys to come and party with them. These siren-esque, 80s party girls are the catalysts for what is to unfold but one has to question why they lure the boys into the village in the first place, knowing what we find out as the narrative unravels...but we'll get to that in a minute.
The boys discover that the inhabitants of the countryside are farmers and families in some kind of rural purgatory, forced under the tyrannical reign of Bill (Peter McCauley), a waxy, undead, discount Charles Dance. The man screams intimidation but I found early on (and conclusively towards the end) that he was a very one-dimensional character that could've benefited from being fleshed out a little more.
There's even a throwaway comment that Martin (Paul Glover) makes halfway through the film about Bill murdering his wife every night, which sounds disturbing as hell: why on earth would he do that, if not for a sadistic streak/psychological trauma? I would've liked to have seen more of it, rather than a lanky old guy standing on his truck of minions and slowly making his way through the film, trying to round up the boys.
I will say that: the pacing of The Locals is all over the place. In some parts, it feels incredibly drawn out, stifling any sense of suspense or urgency. Then it'll do a 180 and crash-course its way through things that I think they could've spent more time exploring: for example, Martin's character goes from cryptid and presenting himself as a helper archetype to deranged lunatic who spends an abnormal amount of time back chatting with a decapitated skull. I could've bought his character being unhinged if it weren't for the fact that, one or two scenes prior, he was totally lucid.
But what made me want to watch this film again is its ability to make the audience empathise with the characters. After discovering that the countryside people cannot die (in essence, they are ghosts) and will simply rise again (shown in parts through stop motion, which I actually enjoyed, as it was reminiscent of 80s horror e.g. Frank's reanimation in Hellraiser (1987)), it is revealed in the last act that during a tumble Paul takes earlier on in the narrative, he actually died as a result.
This moment is actually quite heartbreaking because, in comparison to other horror films with poignant deaths, there's a real sense of tragedy watching Paul and Grant interact after they discover the former's corpse: Grant doesn't want to lose his best friend but Paul tearfully pleads him to remove his body from the countryside so that he can rest in peace, essentially asking Grant in a subtle way to mercy kill him (again).
The one thing I can say from rewatching The Locals is that, despite it being a very low-budget horror and featuring some questionable writing in places, it feels genuine. I can tell a lot of effort and love went into creating this film and I honestly feel that pays off in the end. I'd recommend giving it a go: it might be a little niche and unheard of but it's definitely a decent watch.
Overall rating: 7/10
- K
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