Shivers Down Your Spine – review

Director: Mathew Kister

Release date: 2015

Contains spoilers

Shivers Down your Spine is a portmanteau film that you can track down on DVD but the VoD through Amazon has never really been forthcoming (the film appears but you cannot rent/buy it at the time of review).

It is one with some length – weighing in at over two hours – and unusually seems to have been created with a purpose in mind – rather than just stringing some independently filmed shorts together.

It begins with the portmanteau and a guy (Steve Eaton) is making a mini-pizza but when the microwave dings the pizza is gone and a lamp is in its place. He rubs it and the genie, Sabihah (Megan Shepard), appears. After nearly wasting a wish getting her to cover her boobs up (she gives him that one for free) he appears somewhat uninterested in the wishes per se and eventually gets her to (for one wish) tell him a series of stories – 9 in all. The one we are concerned with is Convention Girl.

Steve Eaton as Justin

In it, Justin (again Steve Eaton) is woken when his friend David (T.J Roe) calls him and asks him to come to his hotel room. The friends are at a horror convention and, responding to David’s insistence, Justin asks whether he has killed a prostitute (Ali Aguilar). When he gets there that is exactly what has happened. David explains, however, that she wasn’t just that. He had met her in the bar, flashed cash and she had come to his room. Once there, however, she had bared fangs and attacked.

staked

David pulls back the covers to reveal she has been staked in the heart – leading Justin to question how David happened to have a stake. Justin does not believe a word of it... If she had fangs (which she no longer does) then they’re at a horror convention – clearly they’d be fake. He wants to call the cops but David has a sure-fire way of proving things… all he needs to do is remove the stake…

memories of her fangs

This was one of the shortest of the stories and, to be honest, the weakest. It had less story than others and less comedy (although not all the shorts have a comedy element, some do and this was meant to be a comedic piece). In fact much of the dialogue seems unnatural in this one and the delivery is just a tad off. It feels more filler than thriller and that’s a shame because, despite being a real budget creation, some of the shorts work really well and this is actually a good portmanteau film when the shorts work. In the case of Convention Girl, however, it didn’t really. As always, the score is for the vampire section only and so 3 out of 10 does not reflect my view of the full experience.

The imdb page is here.

NightShadow: A Vampire's Chronicle – review

Director: Jess Solis

Release Date: 2019

Contains spoilers

Coming in at 50 minutes I might have looked at this “anthology” as a short film but felt compelled to review it – Just to warn you, I guess.

The film doesn’t have (at the time of writing) an IMDb page but, on the Amazon on Demand page we get the following blurb: “A collection of short films from the early age of cinema to the modern day, weaving a tale of the legendary vampire, Dracula.” Inaccurate due to the first film included, as we will see…

Le Manoir du Diable

So, the first film is Georges Méliès’ Le Manoir du Diable and here we have a few points. Whilst there are tropes within the 1896 film that would become common with the vampire genre it was not a vampire film. Also, being released a year before the Novel, it is quite simply not a tale of Dracula. The resolution is horribly low and I suspect this was simply ripped off a YouTube upload.

Jess Solis’ Dracula

The film then goes into “Jess Solis’ Dracula”, a black and white ponderous pseudo-arthouse piece that at one point has a faux-Lugosi voiceover reading a passage from Dracula but the passage narrated is a Van Helsing dialogue. The filming is not great and clearly had little to no budget – the saving grace is it is soon gone and replaced with…

abridged

Well the rest of the film is Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens although the film confesses it is an abridged version. There is some narration added (that reads from the same passage as the narration I mentioned in the previous segment) but the film starts at the inn (so we miss all the opening scenes) and the print used is blooming awful. That said, whilst this didn’t abuse the film as some rejigs have, for the life of me I cannot understand why you’d watch this when the Kino remaster of the film is available.

Simply a way of cashing in on the popularity of VoD. 0 out of 10 for this vehicle (of course Nosferatu, even abridged and poorly printed, is worth more but the score is for the vehicle and concept).

At the time of writing there is no IMDb page.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Drink Slay Love – review

Director: Vanessa Parise

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

This is the filmed version of a young adult novel about a female vampire going to high school. And it was via Lifetime… Now before you turn away there was, at least, a good reason for the vampire in high school trope – which we’ll get to momentarily. There was also, within the cliché, one killer line that absolutely raised the bar for this one (perhaps even the score).

It must also be said that I haven’t read the original book and so I don’t know how accurate it is to the novel (bar one major difference that I discovered doing some research). It features a family of vampires but doesn’t give a clue as to whether the vampires are naturally born (as a separate species) or turned – I’d suggest turned and placed with “families” but then one wonders why the kids are teens (and why two are daughters but one is a male ward with the family but not part of it). The film doesn’t tell us.

Fletcher Donovan as Brad

So we begin with a car and Pearl (Cierra Ramirez) is driving Jadrien (Gregg Sulkin) around and speeding. Pearl is our primary vampire girl and Jadrien the ward of the family. She decides she is hungry and pulls into Jim’s Place, a store, and flirts with employee Brad (Fletcher Donovan). He doesn’t know her but she knows his name. She says its his name badge but actually she’s fed there before – victims have no memories of the attack. She lures him outside for a bite.

bird of prey

After feeding (and leaving him alive) she calls for Jadrien but he doesn’t appear to be there. A bird of prey flaps in and lands on her arm and as she speaks to it she is staked from behind, the stake glows and… she awakes at home. Her mother (Tessie Santiago) grounds her as the fealty ceremony is coming and they are hosting it. The ceremony is once a century and it is where the king vampire (Victor Zinck Jr.) tastes all the young vampires and then all the vampires drink of his blood, swearing fealty to him – the family are hosting the ceremony this year.

gaining a reflection

Pearl sneaks out, goes to Jim’s Place and a couple of geeks notice that her reflection is wavering in the mirror (actually she isn’t meant to have a reflection) and manage to capture her. They have her in a cage that she easily breaks out of and they try to escape and actually manage it as the sun rises. Pearl fears the worst but doesn’t burn as she should. Having explored the human daylight world she tells her family what has happened. As they need victims for the ceremony they send her to high school to get invites into homes, so as to make hunting easier. Unfortunately, as well as kind of gaining a reflection and immunity to sunlight, her evil essence has gained a conscience.

Zack Peladeau as Evan

So, what as happened to her? The staking was by a member of a vampire slayer family (that happen to live in the same location, wouldn’t you just know it) named Evan (Zack Peladeau, Being Human), but he is different from the other slayers – he’s a healer and whoever he heals becomes a better person as well. She is his experiment to try and make vampires good. This differs from the books, where she is still staked but by a sparkly unicorn. The rest of the film sees her trying to cope with school life, love and being a vampire with a conscience who is still expected to be evil. Indeed these vampires are damaged by holy water as they are thoroughly evil (supposedly).

Cierra Ramirez as Pearl

This would all be so much fluff – though lead actress Cierra Ramirez manages to steer out of whine and into sass as often as she can. There is, however, a self (and YA) effacing aspect. Pearl wrecking a car in the school car park, on her first day, is not done to save a mortal but to annoy the queen bee (and sneak an invitation into her home for her parents). The killer line is when she is dancing with Evan at the prom and, instead of being grateful for his 'gift' of conscience, she tells him that he “messed up my life in a high-handed alpha male way and changed me to fit your ideals with no regards for my needs”. The fact that she still ends up with him is telling, but the line was a zinger.

in the sunlight

So, score… well it is fluff but competently made fluff and for the audience it is designed for it will hit the mark. For the genre fan it is light, the evil vampires are evil in name but not really in act so much. However the self-effacing aspect is subversive, the message that boys (even the ‘good’ ones) can’t go around changing girls to suit their whims is positive (and, of course, the vice versa is also true). It probably deserves 4 out of 10 for that but I wouldn’t want to score it higher, because fluff is still fluff.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Short Film: Band-Aids Don't Fix Vampire Bites

This is a short film by Helen Pazen and comes in around the 3.5-minute mark. The story itself is fairly simple with Steven (Zachary Chamberlin) walking along a street at night with his mobile pinging away as he gets message after message from Taylor (Taylor Scheibe) – the messages being about an accident with fangs and someone who looked like Edward Cullen.

Taylor's got fangs

Suddenly Taylor is there and, whilst it seems like Steven knows she’s a vampire, perhaps it was more that he knows she likes to act like a vampire and her actual new state of being is unknown to him? She does seem to have been the type of person who wanted constant contact and Steven has had enough… but is it wise to split up with a vampire…

The embedded short will answer that, at the time of writing I couldn’t find an IMDb page.

Honourable Mention: Mara

Mara is a 2018 movie directed by Clive Tonge and the reason for including it here is because the mara is a vampire type (related in this to the Hag, which I’ll come back to), According to Bane “The mara is created when a child dies before it could be baptized” and its modus operandi is “it finds sleeping men and, sitting upon their chests, crushes them to death by pressing down harder and harder.” This is similar to the hag but, according to Bane, the mara can also drink blood.

The hag, of course, has many regional varieties but we are talking about an energy vampire, tied to sleep paralysis and, like this, will sit on the victim’s chest – this film, like most sleep paralysis movies uses Fuseli’s the Nightmare within its length. The reason I held this to an Honourable Mention is the fact that there doesn’t seem to be a vampiric element to this; supernatural, yes, murderous, definitely, but vampiric, no. As such the film is of genre interest only.

what's her name?

So it opens with an intertitle telling us how many people will suffer from sleep paralysis and how many tie said paralysis to a demonic being. We are then in the Wynesfield family home. Daughter Sophie (Mackenzie Imsand) awakens and is frightened, the closet is open. She steps out of bed and slowly makes her way to her parent’s room, quietly calling for her mommy. Eventually she reaches for the door handle but mom, Helena (Rosie Fellner), comes out but tells her not to look. Too late, she screams on seeing her father’s twisted corpse.

Olga Kurylenko as Kate

Elsewhere Kate (Olga Kurylenko, Paris Je t’aime & Vampire Academy) awakens and is jogging when she gets a call from the police department. She is a psychologist and this is her first call. She is called to the Wynesfield’s to make a call on whether they should commit Helena or whether she should go to jail. The police believe it to be an open and shut case.

Kate looking shocked

She is shown the corpse to start with and then Helena, who is not speaking. She goes to see Sophie, who is with her grandfather (Ted Johnson). Eventually she gets Sophie to say that daddy was killed by Mara. When she mentions the name to Helena, the woman starts screaming. Later, interviewing her, Helena admits that her husband had cheated on her with a student and wanted a divorce, something she had not been able to forgive (no reason given as to why they were still in the same bed), but claims he was killed by a demon called Mara (and in this the name is used as a proper name, not a genus). Kate has no choice but to have her committed.

victim

She has doubts though and starts following up the events (much to the chagrin of the police). It is discovered that the demon is targeting a group of people from a sleep paralysis help group, as well as both Helena and Sophie and now Kate. It ends up being described as a four-stage persecution. First you have sleep paralysis and see her, then you become marked (a burst blood vessel in the eye, making a red mark), then she starts to strangle you and finally she starts appearing in the waking world – always ending in death. Kate has to work out why those targeted are destined to be her victims. Meanwhile sleep specialist Dr Ellis (Mitch Eakins) tries to convince her it is all psychological (running the idea that the sleeper gets the mythology they expect).

cctv footage

When we get down to it Mara turns out to be drawn to guilt. It is described that a disaster calls her (this gets a tad convoluted both as an idea and as it plays out in film) and then she progresses to stage 2 and onwards with sleepers who feel a strong guilt. As she just seems to kill them – strangulation is involved but at no time is it suggested that she feeds or gains sustenance through the attack – she is more like an extreme agent of karma. On camera she seems to be a blur, but she does appear when interacting with a victim.

There you have it… the mara a vampire type that loses her vampiric aspect in this but, nonetheless, is of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Zompire! Dr. Lester's Monster

Weighing in at 14 minutes this is a creature feature that was a 2010 film school project for director Lucien Knotter, filmed in Black and White and featuring the increasingly popular zompire… though not as one might at first think.

It starts off in the lab, where wannabe mad scientist Dr. Lester (Ed Lloyd Moore) is at work, sat behind him is his zombie henchman, Lurch (Jef Johnson). A bat flies in (and a really crap one it is with, on the furthest left periphery of the shot, a blurry hand of the person manipulating the bat), drops off a letter and then transforms into vampire servant Vlad (Andreas Chalikias).

an evil scheme

It is from the Mad Scientist Guild – and it is a rejection of his application to join. There is a glimmer of hope, he can present a finding at the guild and gain entry if it is found to be acceptable. Fail and not only will he be rejected but he will be barred from ever applying again. He has to think about what he wishes to create but all the monsters from his youth are no longer scary. People want pretty vampires and fast zombies.

dance, zompires, dance

Vlad says that monsters can still be scary, put him and Lurch together and… The Dr. has a plan – a bit of Frankenstein type action and he creates a zompire who sits up and is all kinds of fabulous sassy (and called Tim (Blake Heiss)). Tim doesn’t like the term zompire – he prefers vambi – and is not interested in being scary, just performing. However the presentation at the guild is sort of performing… on a stage… what could go wrong?

sparkles

Just to note, a zompire (or vambi) newly turned does sparkle and this does aim jokes at Twilight, which of course is shooting fish in a barrel – however the conflating of the move from the horror staple by using both pretty vampires and fast zombies was interesting. It is probably the first time I’ve seen the latter listed as not scary, they’re just a different kind of scary to the standard Romero zombie and an altogether different metaphor. You can see what happens at the guild below.

The imdb page is here.

Zompire! Dr. Lester's Monster from Lucien Knotter on Vimeo.

Honourable Mention: Hellboy

This is the 2019 reboot of Hellboy, directed by Neil Marshall, and staring David Harbour as the eponymous hero. Now, we’ve looked at a Hellboy product before in the form of Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron.

The film starts in Mexico with Hellboy searching out Esteban Ruiz (Mario de la Rosa) a missing Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BRPD) agent who disappeared after being sent to investigate a nest of vampires.

Hellboy enters a place hosting a Luchador match and, on being called out, recognises the masked wrestler Camazotz as Ruiz. He is challenged to a match and – in the finest Santo tradition – as the match goes on, we realise that Camazotz* is a vampire; revealing his strength at first, then fangs and eventually turning into a manbat. Eventually Hellboy throws him onto a ring post, staking him. Ruiz utters a prophecy before dying that will, of course, be relevant to the film moving forwards.

bat form

So, a fleeting visitation – as for the film itself. It was alright but lacked the charm of the original Del Toro directed vehicle. The filmmakers went for high gore and bad language (possibly to distinguish themselves from the earlier vehicle, or maybe because Deadpool did R rated with class and they wanted to emulate its success) and it didn’t gel – the language, for instance, felt forced and detracted from, rather than added to, the experience. There is an over-reliance on CGI but, you know what, it had big boots to fill and forgetting the earlier films it was ok.

The imdb page is here.
*Camazotz being a Mayan bat god.

Dracula in a Women’s Prison – review

Director: Jeff Leroy

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

The first reaction to a film with the title Dracula in a Women’s Prison is that it is likely to be poor... on the other hand if the filmmakers are confident enough to post a screener from the States over to the UK then they must have a level of conviction, of belief in their product. The second reaction is, of course, with the title Dracula in a Women’s Prison you kind of know what type of filmic entertainment you have in store.

Robert Rhine as Dracula

The “women in prison” (wip) form of film is a particular sub-genre of exploitation film and, whilst this is not great cinema, it is abundantly clear that the filmmakers intimately know their sub-genre and, despite being made in the 21st Century, this summoned up all the camp and exploitation of the late 60s/early 70s wip-oeuvre. The filmmakers really like their horror too. This is a standalone sequel to Werewolf in a Women’s Prison (2006) and promises a third film Frankenstein in a Women’s Prison.

the prison

The film starts with bats (what else) and cgi impaled bodies, eventually focusing onto Dracula (Robert Rhine) who rants about foolish mortals. I will return to the cgi later. Cutting to the women’s prison in the Latin country of Campuna. A dominatrix guard (Puma Swede) walks the halls forcing inmates to kiss each other for her entertainment. However, an enterprising prisoner has made a stake and the guard gets the sharp end and the ensuing riot allows two inmates to escape.

stake in the mouth

One of them is American journalist Rachel (Victoria De Mare), and she and her cellmate do actually escape. During the riot we see that staking in the mouth is apparently as effective as in the heart and, when they die, the vampires turn into giant cgi bats as they explode. Meanwhile a hearse chases the escapees down and the cellmate loses her head as she is run over. Dracula (or Drago as he is going by) intercepts Rachel.

ropy looking decapitation

So, let’s talk cgi – there are some moments of practical effects but mostly this uses cgi effects and they kind-of work. They don’t look brilliant, as the decapitation attests to, and often are used when practical effects would be better (and more 70s) but they are the right sort of camp for this movie, fitting into the knowing B movie pastiche. That exploitation thread maintains throughout the film with enough sexploitative nudity and lesbianism to satisfy its place in a sub-genre but not so much that it drifts beyond exploitation.

Liz is going to get into trouble

Back to the film and, over in America, Rachel’s twin sister Liz (also Victoria De Mare) wakes knowing her sister is dead and seeing the wraith of her sibling calling for help through the TV. Liz is a cancer survivor (I’m guessing this was thrown in to explain the various wigs she wears, but the filmmakers missed a trick as the chemo might have been used as a plot point with regards her blood) and needs to go to Campuna but her boyfriend, Dan (Ryan Izay, Brotherhood of Blood), wants her to wait. A couple of scenes later, she sees Dan turns into her sister whilst they have sex she decides she has to go straight away, slipping away as he sleeps and leaving him a note.

Rosie and Liz

Meanwhile, in a café in Campuna, an American tourist reads a book. A (fly eating) local cop talks to her and then arrests her on trumped up charges. Waitress Rosie (Rachel Riley) tries to intervene but the girl is taken to the prison – we then see her with a spigot in her neck. Of course, Liz ends up in the café and she and Rosie begin a torrid affair (it is an exploitation film after all). We discover that Rosie’s husband was turned, her child lost to the vampires (the film even manages to put a narrative explanation over a sex scene) and now wants revenge. The cop is actually her brother.

on tap

I won’t spoil any more but you might wonder, is it any good? As I said before it is not great cinema but it does know the sub-genre it is emulating and does that with panache. It is helped by the cast; Victoria De Mare has a substantial background in B-movies and she and Rachel Riley are clearly enjoying themselves as the vampire hunters, Robert Rhine skilfully navigates the border of camp to offer a performance that carries just the right level of absurdity balanced against gravitas and finally his vampire lieutenant, as played by Elissa Dowling (the Last revenants & Dracula’s Curse), is pitched just right. Remember, that is right for a film immersed in 70s sexploitation and, notably, the wip sub-genre. As such I think a solid 5 out of 10 balances the fact that this is doing what it should in order that it might be what it wants to be, and doesn’t pretend to be anything else.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

You can also buy the DVD direct here.

As a bonus, I was sent some publicity photos that I'm posting below:

Short Film: Vampire Chaos

So, when I looked at Eternal Love Lost I suggested that it became the opening of this film – originally named Search for Love Lost and directed by Joey Harlow in 2011. I watched it as Vampire Chaos on Amazon Prime. That film seems to have vanished and reappeared having been renamed Vampire Madness; begging a question of, “Why so many name changes?” I also suggested, when I looked at the short, that this was a feature. I take that back – the 60-minute length actually only containing about 45 minutes of film (including the 15 minutes of the other short) and the rest consisting of credits and outtakes.

In some ways it is lucky that this is a short film, for if I was genuinely reviewing it then it would be taking a fast path to my Worst 100. After the overly serious, bad dialogue and poor delivery of the original short, this cuts to a pair of ‘jokers’ called Bart (Craig Kucken) and Dwane (Don McIntyre) doing a poor Wayne and Garth impression and looking to make Wayne’s World 3. What has this to do with vampires?

Dwane and Bart

Well, apparently, Bart’s “girlfriend” is Heather (Christi Perovski), the doppelganger of the lost love of vampire the Count (Jacob Godzak). Bad wigs, poor acting, atrocious dialogue, casual racism and as funny as a terminal illness. This one’s to be avoided.

The imdb page is here.

If you really can’t avoid it then it is On Demand @ Amazon US and On Demand @ Amazon UK (currently as Vampire Madness, links accurate at time of going to press).

Más Que a Nada en el Mundo – review

Director: Andrés León Becker & Javier Solar

Release date: 2006

Contains spoilers

Vampires, as I often say, get everywhere and this Mexican family drama, titled in English More Than Anything in the World, is an example of that. Ostensibly a drama about the tensions between a single mother, Emilia (Elizabeth Cervantes), and her young daughter, Alicia (Julia Urbini), as mother copes with pressures of being a single parent, wanting her own life, a touch of depression (it would seem) but loving her daughter also – yet there is an entire vampire plot within, though it is a belief in vampires rather their actual existence.

As such the film is a curious mix of Hallmark (though of a higher quality than much from that stable) and vampire genre and so is not going to be high on the watch lists of many visitors to TMtV. Yet it is competently made and carried remarkably well by child actress Julia Urbini.

moving in

The family drama sees Emilia split with her lover and move her and her daughter into a new apartment (a fixer upper). Alicia’s father is estranged and, we are told, not living in Mexico. The drama follows issues around getting to school on time, holding down a job as a one parent family, Emilia’s depression and need for a male companion and the tensions between mother and daughter. It is told from Alicia’s point of view and, as such, is brave as it needs shorthand character building for Emilia and also it rests a large burden for success on the young actress.

Juan Carlos Colombo as Hector

But we’re not interested in that aspect so much as the vampire side. We meet early on Hector (Juan Carlos Colombo) – he is never named in film – who is at the doctor’s undergoing tests. He is ill (we assume cancer) and it is so progressed it is inoperable and terminal. He lives on the same floor as the primary characters and there is no interaction as such – they meet in a lift and he doesn’t engage with Emilia. However their apartments have windows facing each other and they can hear what goes on in each domicile.

Elizabeth Cervantes as Emilia

Alicia hears noises on the first night – Hector being sick – and becomes convinced that there is a monster. At school, her best friend suggests that there were vampires in her old apartment and that it is likely vampires in hers. Alicia becomes more and more scared (at one point sleeping under her bed) but Emilia, unaware due to her own issues, is dismissive and believes her daughter to be just acting up. So the drama roles on with the presence of the ‘vampire’ always in Alicia’s mind and soon coalescing into being the sickly looking Hector. She becomes convinced her mother has been bitten (a hicky from a lover) and is possessed.

film in film

The possession aspect is introduced after she watches the film Vampire Republic, with some nice Mexican vampire Black and White footage. Her friend’s sister is a Goth and sends Alicia a cross – placing it over the vampire’s heart, whilst he sleeps, will slay the vampire and save her mother. Of course there isn’t really any further lore as the vampire is a vulnerable, poorly old man. As for the film itself – as mentioned Julia Urbini really manages to carry the film through but it might not be your cup of tea given the primary subject matter. However for a competent, well drawn film of that genre I’ll suggest 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Van Helsing – Season 3 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2018

Contains spoilers

The SyFy post-apocalyptic series returns and it manages (for the most part) to keep the pace that it achieved in Season 2. I say ‘for the most part’ because it has scattered some of the characters and therefore some of the pacing is lost as we shift focus from one group to another. However overall it worked.

Of course, the main focus is the two Van Helsing girls, Vanessa (Kelly Overton, True Blood) and Scarlet (Missy Peregrym, Dark Angel: Love in Vein & Reaper: I Want my Baby back) and the position season 2 left them in where Vanessa was in trouble, captured by a research group, and Scarlet had released a vampire elder, sworn to serve the Van Helsings and sent him to her rescue.

Sarah and Julius

After Scarlet saves some of their motley crew of survivors, Scarlet and Vanessa manage to get back together. However we discover that Julius (Aleks Paunovic, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency) and Flesh (Vincent Gale, Sanctuary & Bloodrayne 2: Deliverance), by dint of being vampires, being cured by Vanessa’s bite/blood and then being bitten by the new daywalking vampires, have become immortal – returning from injuries as severe as their brains being blown out or following from a high rise building.

the Oracle and Sam

As for the daywalking vampires; the vampire who was experimented on is biting feral vampires, returning some of their cunning and intelligence and creating an army. This daywalking gift eventually gets to the sisterhood – a group of female mystical vampire warriors. They too start swelling ranks, castrating males before making them one of them. The Van Helsings themselves are hunting the elders down and we get to see a range of vampires through this including a psychic vampire, jiangshi (although these are just very fast Chinese vampire warriors, rather than the hopping vampire) and a mysterious vampire Oracle (Jesse Stanley), who is looking to create a new vampire elder. She has a connection with Sam (Christopher Heyerdahl, also Sanctuary, Matthew Blackheart Monster Smasher & Are You Afraid of the Dark: Tale of the Midnight Madness) that goes back to his twisted childhood. Whilst Sam is front and centre in some episodes he feels a tad underused perhaps and certainly Mohammed (Trezzo Mahoro) is pretty much side-lined through the season, whilst playing a vital role in the finale.

Vanessa has red-eye

I mentioned the focus shifting due to the spread of the supporting characters and this is true. Some of the storylines seemed too shorthand (Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) accidentally finding and losing his sister (Sara Canning, the Vampire Diaries) didn’t have the build it might have had and lost emotional punch because of that). The season felt bloodier than previous ones, but that could just be me forgetting previous gore levels. The central mythology is now being brought into view, but don’t expect all the answers in this season. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US