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The Locker
Davy Jones’ Locker -noun: the ocean's bottom, esp. when regarded as the grave of all who perish at sea. (Dictionary.com)
Fremantle, Western Australia, current day.
Braylon Reynolds is an author seemingly at peace with himself and his life. The film opens in his small house by the Fremantle port as he is finishing a day’s writing and the sun is setting. He lives alone, but his routine is free and easy and it is obvious he has been living there for quite some time. He is somewhere around the age of 35.
In the beginning of the film, a pattern is developed; by day Braylon sits and writes via his dated typewriter and by night he walks across the broad dirt road to “Chip’s”, a bar where he seems very at ease and well-liked. He is shown conversing with the regulars (which are the entirety of the customers) and the bartender, Chip.
Of specific importance are the transitions between these locations, the house and the bar, and the way that Braylon looks so comfortable with the land, the remote waves of the Indian Ocean, and all the noises a port makes, day and night.
One evening, Braylon finishes writing and, as usual, and leaves his place. On his way across the street, he notices a large ship ported next to the usual smaller ones. He wanders over and, while conversing with one of the seamen, learns that the ship is to set sail for a port in Kenya the day after tomorrow and was still in need of some crew. He sounds interested but doesn’t give any final response. He heads over to “Chip’s”.
The mood should be loose and casual, and the evening begins like any other. Braylon gets very drunk amongst his bar friends and is shown enjoying himself (maybe a little too much) over billiards, darts, and other activities one is accustomed to enjoying in a bar. One by one the regulars leave, and finally, only Braylon remains.
Drunkenly, Braylon tells Chip they are to have one more beer each, on him. Chip nods, but looks distant and broken. He walks away and comes back with a couple of bottles.
Braylon cracks his open, then jumps as he looks back up at his friend and server. Chip is the same as he ever was save one detail: where once there were two very human eyes there are now two black saucers, jelly-like and indefinite. Chip is crying, and tears stream from the saucers in big waves.
He warns Braylon not to go with the ship, begs him, pleads with him. The scene ends.
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Braylon is on board, and has a small cabin to himself. It is assumed that he and the rest of the crew took off no more than a day or so before. There are several scenes involving Braylon conversing with the crew, and of course performing small duties as he signed on to do, but in the evenings when the other crew members were mingling, he would go back to his cabin and write. He seems more distant and unsure than he did in the film’s establishing scenes.
As the ship sails onward over the endless stretch of ocean, the water and sky seem to become blacker. A storm seems to be on the rise, but no one notices but Braylon. His mood becomes less gracious and more brooding every day, and he begins to retire to his quarters earlier and earlier.
One night he is seen smoking over the edge of the boat, gazing into the black abyss of the ocean. A greenish hand touches his shoulder and he turns around. There stands a man in seamen uniform, taught from head to toe. His eyes are like Chip’s several weeks before, deep dark saucers which seem to match the sea in color and depth.
Braylon seems just as nervous in this encounter as he was during the one in the bar. The sailor asks him for a light, and he shakingly gives it to him. The sailor begins to ask him about his life, and gets more and more personal until he becomes blunt. He tells Braylon to get off the boat, to jump into the ocean if he must, but to get the hell off the boat. As his talk becomes more vicious, his eyes become deeper and blacker.
Suddenly he is in the water. There is blackness all around him, up is down, down is up. Tentacles come from all around him, but he seems so deep in the water that he (and we) can see nothing of their origins. He screams, and water fills his lungs.
Suddenly he is lying on board, choking on the water but saved and alright. The crew says they heard him screaming and then a splash, but when he hysterically shouts about the sailor with the holes for eyes they search him suspiciously. They neither heard nor saw any trace of such a creature.
Over the course of several weeks his encounters with the abyss-eyed men become more and more frequent and, even more frightening, his close friends and crewmates start to haunt him with the eyes. There begins to be more group encounters, and his life with the ordinary crew and his nightmares with the black-eyed crew become intertwined in a nauseating, surreal storm at sea.
It has been several months and the wear and tear of the haunting of the creatures has taken its tole on Braylon. He is jumpy, frail, pale, sick. His writing has stopped; his typewriter lies in the corner of his cabin, covered in dust and cobwebs.
And one night, almost expectantly, a soft song bleeds through the air and into the ears of Braylon Reynolds, who is sitting cross legged in the other corner of his cabin.
The song awakens something in him, and he ventures out onto the deck of the large ship. He turns to the left and sees the crew, all gape-eyed and staring at him.
The song continues, its origin unknown, its tone haunting and distant. The creatures on deck begin to whisper to him softly, “jump, jump”. They tell him to go down there, to venture down to the bottom, where he will find what he is looking for.
Braylon, seemingly under a trance, climbs slowly overboard and falls into the water. The creatures sluggishly wander to the edge of the ship and look down at him as he slowly drowns, choking on the pitch-black waters of the Indian Ocean. He sinks down, down. He is consumed.
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The final scene opens in “Chip’s” during a typical Friday night. The crowd is big; the ship has just come in, and sailors are leaking into the pub to celebrate their return. Chip is looks very normal and himself.
A man walks in suddenly, very business-like and stark. He tells Chip of Braylon’s suicide at sea, of the way he threw himself into the black waters at night; the way one sailor heard a splash but by the time the crew had gotten to the edge there was nothing, no sight of the man.
The man says he is sorry, and leaves.
And Chip looks after him as he exits, and on his face there is nothing.
End.
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