Unlucky in love Drew (Drew Sinclair) wanders into a pub and finds the gaff empty except for Johnny (Nathan Geering), who announces that the place is closed and that Drew should find an alternative establishment to enjoy his refreshment. However, it turns out that Drew is meeting someone there for a first date and attempts to hang around for a bit, hoping that he might be allowed to stay. This turns out to be an extremely bad decision on Drew’s part, because the boozer is the stage for a series of appointments as various martial arts assassins are scheduled to turn up on the hour, every hour, intent on killing Johnny…
Writer/director/star Nathan Geering’s film opens with a caption informing that The Lock-In is a love letter to old school kung fu movies and so it proves to be, except that this is likely to be the first kung fu movie set in the exotic locales of Rotherham and almost certainly the first to use the word “mardy” in its screenplay. Very early on it transpires that Nathan has escaped a family of trained killers headed up by The Father (genre royalty Keith Vitale) and is trying to live a peaceful existence. However, you don’t just leave this family, hence the regular supply of skilled nutters staking their claim to be the one who finally took out Johnny.
Of course, Drew’s wheedling persistence buys himself enough time to scope out the place before his date shows, then traps him in a seemingly never-ending fight for survival. I say “seemingly never-ending” because for folks who may not enjoy watching a procession of folks getting punched, kicked, glassed, hit with pool cues, gouged, stabbed, broken and generally getting battered, The Lock-In runs just four minutes shy of two hours and although there are pauses for the Drew/Johnny double act to develop, there’s a lot of acrobatic thumping on display here as the bodies pile up. I’m talking literally. There’s actually a pile of bodies in one of the rooms, which is inevitably added to as the latest challenger fails to dispatch their target.
This could have been realised with straight-faced, brutal violence, but given the clumsy, naïve nature of Drew and the increasing annoyance at Johnny at having this passenger along for the ride, The Lock-In wisely, ahem, locks into action comedy mode. It plays up the laughs as the audience finds out more of Drew’s disastrous dating background and how spectacularly unprepared he is to deal with any of the increasingly dangerous situation, even if he does possess a green belt in judo.
For a film with a trim budget, the action, choreographed by Geering, is engaging and has enough variety to keep fight fans coming back for more. For instance, one opponent’s weapon is her deadly pigtails; another couple attempts to salsa Johnny to death. It’s daft, sure, but the impressive athleticism and stunt work is a match for productions with far higher budgets and there’s plenty of nods to subgenre staples to reward fans of 1970s/1980s martial arts flicks, without those references getting in the way for folks who haven’t so much as seen Enter The Dragon.
The Lock-In does fall into that first feature syndrome of loading the proceedings with as many ideas as possible, which means there’s not only the main plot, but flashbacks to previous missions and an extended encore in a scrapyard (with the emphasis on “scrap”) and by the end credits there’s the slight feeling that this could have lost a couple of confrontations and been the tighter for it. However, there are numerous crowd-pleasing moments, particularly a standout flashback sequence in which Johnny battles his way up several levels of a building to confront a piano playing psychopath.
It’s heartening that my home county of South Yorkshire is now on the kung fu movie map and Nathan Geering’s enthusiasm for this type of movie is evident in every frame of The Lock-In, pushing the ambition of low-budget filmmaking way, way beyond expected levels. There’s even a ruckus up at several thousand feet between two skydivers, filmed for real as they slap each other around while plummeting towards the deck. It’s that kind of insanity which powers the film and, coupled with comedic exchanges which hit the mark more often than not, you can’t help but smile at the sheer audacity of the project. Also, what other movie of this type would refer to an enemy fighter as a “bugger”? Get thi sen along to this alehouse for a few rounds of break-fu and don’t forget the shandy for Drew.
The Lock-In featured at this year’s Spirit of Independence Film Festival in Sheffield, UK.