MOVIE REVIEW: LOCUSTS (Screening as part of Revelation Film Festival)

Shane | 8 July 2019 | Reply

MOVIE REVIEW: LOCUSTS (Screening as part of Revelation Film Festival)
Directed by Heath Davis
Starring Ben Guerens, Nathaniel Dean, Jessica McNamee
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
73%

Hot on the heels of the excellent Book Week, Heath Davis’s latest film concerns itself less with the titular scavenging insects, and more with their feral human equivalents – people who would squeeze everything they could out of others then leave them for dead and move on to the next one. It’s especially apt here, as everyone involved in this story is primarily concerned with themselves.

Ryan Black, played with authentic desperation by Ben Guerens, is reunited with his estranged brother Tyson (Nathaniel Dean) when he reluctantly returns to their dusty country hometown for their abusive father’s funeral, and immediately gets drawn into an extortion racket with a gang of local heavies devoid of any decency whatsoever.

Ryan is hoping that Dad’s left him something in his will, but all he finds is a recently remortgaged home and a whole lot of dodgy dealings in this seedy shithole. When an unconnected, potentially lucrative business deal falls through at the eleventh hour, Ryan finds his brother kidnapped and is forced to team up with ex-flame Izzy (Jessica McNamee) to rob the strip club where she works.

Tightly scripted and co-produced by Angus Watts (also co-producer of Book Week), Locusts is taut and rises above the possible stereotypes of its plot. Cinematic allusions are everywhere – sun-bleached outback vistas and roadkill roos leave us in no doubt that this is a lawless and desolate place out of step with the times, and to which Ryan should never have returned.

Locusts is a slightly one-dimensional noir genre film, where the bad guys are bad for the sake of badness, and the good guys aren’t a whole lot better. A pinch or two more humour might have lightened the load, but the cast are charismatic, the director on point, and the story gripping enough to keep the viewer captivated all the way through. In the low budget end of Aussie filmmaking, that’s triumph enough in and of itself.