The Locusts (1997)

Though writer/director John Patrick Kelly's star-packed debut isn't by any means a good movie, it's at least an incessantly watchable one, brimming with the kind of lurid, Southern-fried melodrama not seen since the heyday of Tennessee Williams. In fact, The Locusts' debt to Williams is downright slavish: there's an earnest drifter (Vince Vaughn); a lusty, almost-past-her-prime matriarch (Kate Capshaw); a sexually confused farmhand (Jeremy Davies) who's apparently received too many kicks to the skull; and the well-meaning, beautiful town sweetheart (Ashley Judd) who tries to console our hero, who in turn finds himself inexplicably attracted to The Wrong Woman. The movie's dew-swept cornfields and sweat-soaked '50s period decor only add to the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-redux feel. Vaughn's understated performance makes the film worth watching, even if Capshaw's enjoyably campy femme fatale is more in line with the script's kitschy, overheated tone. More far flung is Davies' unconvincing, tic-laden work as the mentally deficient Flyboy: he's like an escapee from a convention of Anthony Perkins impersonators, and Kelly, mistaking mannerism for character, allows his scenes to play on much longer than any audience should have to bear. But for those in the mood for lurid plot twists garnished with loads of atmosphere, The Locusts is passable late-night fare. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide