Use of Tropes: the Wailing

The Wailing is a 2016 film by Korean auteur Hong-jin Na and, from the outset, I have to say that it is a wonderful rabbit warren of misdirection throughout and so bleakly dark it is untrue. Coming in at just over 2.5 hours, the biblical quote at the head directly relates to the ending rather than just being a scene setter and you know from this you are in for a ride, although that ride is going to be tense.

The film uses many themes and we certainly have possession/exorcism and a moment that is wonderfully zombie in its depiction. There is also the use of tropes that are perhaps from the vampire genre, which is why I’m looking at it here.

the murderer

The film itself starts in a village in South Korea and local policeman Jong-goo (Do-won Kwak) has to get up, though it is still dark and a rainstorm rages, as someone has died. He is persuaded to stay and eat before leaving, by his mother-in-law (Jin Heo), who lives with him, his wife (Jang So-Yeon) and his daughter Hyo-jin (Hwan-hee Kim). Eating with them, he explains that it is the ginseng-seller’s wife who has died, apparently murdered. When he eventually gets to the crime scene, it has been discovered that the seller himself was murdered (elsewhere) and dragged to the house. Outside is the murderer, handcuffed and seemingly in a trance, his skin covered in a rash and boils.

in the forest

So, we have families where one of them goes mad and slaughters everyone, and the perpetrator always has the rash. But there is talk about a Japanese immigrant (Jun Kunimura) living in the woods and it is around him that our tropes appear. In the first instance, being Japanese, he is an outsider – and, of course, this makes him the Other, which is often the role of a vampire. The film moves us into a scene where we see him in, what is revealed to be, a second-hand story being told. A man is in the forest and finds a dead deer, he lifts it but looses his balance and falls down an incline and cracks his head on a rock. When he wakes the Japanese man is nearby, naked, bar a diaper, and tearing into the deer with his teeth. He sees the man has woken and comes at him, bearing over a rock, his ears pointed, his eyes red…

The mysterious woman

Now this could be just an Othering urban legend or xenophobic tall tale. Later, whilst sitting outside another crime scene, a mysterious woman (Woo-hee Chun) annoys Jong-goo by throwing stones in his approximate direction, with her gradually moving physically closer to him. Eventually she gets to the cop and then she enters the crime scene, despite his protests, and shows him where the deaths occurred and then says that the ‘old woman’ told her where it happened and also told her that the “Jap is a ghost. He was gonna suck her blood dry.” This is clearly our most vampiric aspect. The mysterious woman then tells Jong-goo that if he has seen the Japanese Man (and he has, a couple of time) then that is the ghost stalking him for his blood. Returning to the biblical quote I mentioned, which was Luke 24:37-39 – where the Christ risen from the grave says he is not a ghost as he is corporeal – the film makes us wonder if he can be a ghost and corporeal?

the photos

Jong-goo leaves her to take a call and when he returns she has vanished. He searches for her but at the back of the house, instead of her, he sees the Japanese Man, naked and eating flesh. The Japanese man runs at him… He wakes from a nightmare – now we quickly establish he did see and lose the woman – as his boss is aware of it – but he has dreamt the Japanese man in his bestial state. The cops speak to the witness from the forest, who swears he saw the Japanese Man in bestial form, and have him take them to the stranger’s remote house. On the way there they find the deer and realise he was telling the truth (though that could have just been about his fall) but they don’t get to the house as there is a sudden storm and the witness is struck by lightning. This could be coincidence or... well, we also know that control of storms is part of the genre. Things get more urgent for Jong-goo when they eventually get to the Japanese Man’s home and find photos of those who have had the rash and items of their possessions, including Hyo-jin’s shoe. Getting home Jong-goo discovers she is developing the rash and her personality has changed.

Hyo-jin is ravenous

Interestingly there are points when Hyo-jin becomes ravenously hungry for any food – reminiscent of the feeding of one of the restless dead in the film Strigoi, and there was a rash element in that film too. The photos are an interesting aspect, as one reading (as there are photos of them alive and dead) is that they are a way of stealing a soul. However, the film twists and turns and, whilst Jong-goo becomes convinced the Japanese man is some sort of evil shaman and persuades some of the townfolk to blame him for what is happening, we also get told that he is a good shaman or monk who is trying to protect those afflicted. The Othering also comes in when someone suggests that the Japanese Man is also a rapist – though his alleged victim is dead, having hung herself after one of the mass murders, so cannot confirm or deny. Jong-goo’s mother-in-law has him employ a shaman also, and the death hex he attempts to cast at the Japanese Man involves hammering iron stakes into a wooden fetish.

zombie-ish moment

This was a great film. I have seen complaints that the ending is confusing. There is apparently a deleted scene that does clarify the ending but only in as much as it agrees with what I thought the film was saying anyway. It is a film that manages to build a palpable tension and is relentlessly dark, nevertheless, it is worth seeking out if you haven’t seen it and it does use vampire genre tropes.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: The Not so Bright Vampire

Viewed at the 2020 IVFAF, this is a film by Jim & Nick Zounis that is just under 2.5 minutes and is incredibly simple in format.

The film has been treated to look like is has base scratching and is sepia. It portrays a vampire, at first in crap bat form (and it really, deliberately, is crap) and later in human form and an encounter with a rake.

 

the vampire

That isn’t a spoiler as the slapstick is telegraphed ahead, but there isn’t much more to write either. It really is that simple.

At the time of writing there is no IMDb page.

Jakob’s Wife – review

Director: Travis Stevens

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

When I first noticed Jakob’s Wife, and watched the trailer I found myself immediately excited. The trailer looked great and it starred Larry Fessenden whose output both as actor and director I love. Of course, it is often a mistake getting excited for a film, you raise those expectations past a point that the film can reach and end up more disappointed than you would have been going in cold.

I’m happy to report, not this time. If anything this rose above those expectations and was such great fun – a character study, a social commentary, a black comedy with the added joy of some very gory moments. Fessenden was fantastic but his performance was eclipsed, in some respects, but also complemented by the stellar performance by the star of the film Barbara Crampton (God of Vampires, Replace & the Sisterhood).

Jakob preaches

It starts with a church, we hear a squeaking and see two rats outside in the carpark. Inside Jakob (Larry Fessenden), who is the pastor, gives a sermon about how husbands should love their wives but his own wife, Anne (Barbara Crampton), looks less than happy. As people leave, they speak to Jakob, including a young woman, Amelia (Nyisha Bell). She is asked why she is there on her own, she admits her mother has started drinking again and Jakob offers to go to their home.

Nyisha Bell as Amelia

The camera follows Amelia on her long trek home. She gets to a sparsely populated area, ironically where she lives, when she hears a noise. Scared she looks around and then visibly jumps when she notices the rats at her feet. She heads to home but a whisper in the dark says her name. She stops, looks around as something descends slowly behind her… The next day the local sheriff, Mike (Jay DeVon Johnson), comes to see Jakob and Anne – Amelia is missing, but, of course, they cannot shed light on her disappearance.

not domestic bliss

Later that day Jakob’s brother, Bob (Mark Kelly, Angel), and his wife, Carol (Sarah Lind, Blade the Series), have dinner with Jakob and Anne. The conversation gravitates to the missing girl – after some stereotyped guessing of what may have happened, the viewpoints steeped in patriarchy. Anne, in response, states that good people just don’t leave their families. Once their guests have left, we see Jakob cleaning his teeth and then snoring in bed and rolling into her – Anne, for her part, seems aggravated by her husband. In the morning she mentions that a Mill-renovation proposal she was involved in has been accepted and they have a locally born designer coming to help – Tom Lowe (Robert Rusler, Vamp). Jakob makes a point in saying that Tom is her old flame.

in the mill

Anne meets Tom and they have a drink and reminisce and we hear aspects of Anne coming through that perhaps have been buried, her dreams and adventurousness. Tom admits he would not have guessed her marrying Jakob but she says that her mother died, just after Tom left the area, and Jakob, and the church, were there for her. They go out to the mill, clearly implied to have been the place of youthful trysts, and inside he kisses her. She hesitates and then kisses him back but a noise has them descending to the lower level. They find two crates and sit on them, they kiss again but she breaks away – she can’t do it to Jakob.

traumatised

The crate lid starts moving. They open it and there are a couple of rats. The other crate does the same and Tom opens it revealing a mass of rats that attack him, shredding his flesh. Anne backs away as something swoops down upon her… Jakob is phoning to track Anne down as it is late and she comes in, she is silhouetted on the stairs as she says she is going to bed so he doesn’t see that, under her clutched bag, her blouse is soaked in blood. In the bathroom, in a marvellous moment of acting, she is hysterical, hyperventilating – wounded and devastated we can feel her trauma.

Anne changes

So, we then follow Anne and her changes. We get some standard tropes – the wearing of a scarf to hide the bites, the loss of appetite, the being drawn to myoglobin in meat packaging and asking the butcher for blood (which she drinks and subsequently vomits graphically as animal blood is no good). This comes with increased strength, new teeth coming through (behind her front teeth as these are Nosferatu-styled fangs) and, whilst she does move around in daylight, her mouth is burned by the dentist’s UV teeth whitener. However, the bigger change is in her personality, she gains confidence and feels (as she puts it) alive.

Bonnie Aarons as the Master

Now I don't think it too much of a spoiler to reveal that the Master (Bonnie Aarons) is portrayed as Orlock gender-swapped. In this the vampire represents freedom and the vampirism is emancipation from the patriarchy – be that the Judeo-Christian patriarchy that Jakob represents or the wider forms of patriarchy in the form of authority figures such as the sheriff or familial figures such as Bob. Even Tom objectifies and projects his view of what she is onto her. The changes the vampirism brings shifts the dynamics of her marriage, something that Jakob rails against at first and the film is as much 'can he accept a marriage of equals' as 'can he save his wife'?

the Master attacks

Further lore that is worth noting includes the fact that whilst holding the bible seems to fail Jakob at one point, religious items are efficient – be that holy water, or a communion wafer that is placed onto the soil where a vampire has been buried and causes the ground to smoke. This is as much symbols of the patriarchy impacting the feminine as the standard good vs evil. The Master can control minds, a controlled human’s eyes misting over, and cause them to self-harm. Feeding turns (I say feeding rather than a bite as we see a turn after a throat is cut by nails, the head wrenched aside and the blood drunk as it spurts upwards) and a stake to the heart kills. I have mentioned the rats, which the Master can control, and she can also open up another’s sexuality – as she does when, from a distance, she causes Anne to become lost in sensuality.

Anne's new strength

There are some neat streaks of black comedy running through the film – checking on an elderly parishioner, finding her dead and stealing her body to harvest blood, and the subsequent interaction with a neighbourhood kid, are played for dark laughs. But that side does not overpower the character drama. The film does not shy away from blood either and we get a few very bloody attacks. Larry Fessenden offers simply one of the best performances I have seen him give but the show is stolen, very much, by Barbara Crampton who is magnificent. That having been said their performances also complement each other.

I really did like this one – 9 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Honourable Mention: 60 Seconds to Di3

The third in the horror anthology series, like the first in the series, the films within this anthology are too short to warrant scoring. However, there is a definitive vampire segment and another segment that, as we will see, may not seem it but is a vampire piece if you know the feature film it came from.

When I looked at the first film, I noted a section entitled Flesh and Spirit and commented that it was “essentially a vampire bite” and nothing else. In this we get In Flesh and Spirit: The Lamentation, which was directed by Evan Makrogiannis.

first light

The segment is narrated by Baron Misuraca (himself), almost late for his own funeral he quips as he beats the sun to his lair. He has spent the night with the starlet Ann Gable (Deborah Dutch), doing activities he describes as “outlandishly wretched” – leading to flashes of said activities, which of course means some topless shots. Having considered the evening, he decides to open the door to dawn’s first light.

chasing

The next segment to consider is a piece entitled Run, Lady, Run by Jason Figgis. A man is being attacked, though there is little to suggest what manner of creature is atop him - zombie, cannibal or vampire. However, the victim manages to tell a nearby lady to run… which she does, chased by the attacker, with the film ending as he closes in on her. You are unlikely to pick this as a vampire segment unless you recognise it as a clip from Figgis’ feature the Ecstasy of Isabel Mann.

bloodied

A couple of mentions to two segments directed by and starring Jennifer Nangle. The first involves her horror hostess character Malvolia in the culinary cannibalistic themed Malvolia's Midnight Snack. I don’t believe the Malvolia character is a vampire, but she is certainly a vamp. The other, the Pill, has her playing a character simply credited as ‘her’, whilst Garrett Lee plays ‘him’. A first date in which she feeds him a pill, which he assumes is recreational, but paralyses him yet keeps him alive as she devours him. We do not see the wound, only her bloodied face.

bite

There are moments in this anthology that work – however the films themselves are only moments and the poorer moments outweigh the better. Also, the shorts often struggle to have a point or a satisfying denouement precisely because they are only moments. The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

With Stake and Spade: Vampiric Diversity in Poland – review

Author: Łukasz Kozak

Translator: Mark Bence

First published: 2020

The blurb: Everyone has heard of vampires, but few know about upiórs, strzygas, strzygońs, and wieszczys. Yet sources from Poland and the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth offer a wealth of fascinating material to discover Slavic beliefs in the living dead, which later became a universal myth known the world over. This book contains a small but representative selection of 80 texts spanning almost 500 years, ranging from scholarly works and religious treatises to official documents, ethnographic essays, and press reports on true events.

The review: I was lucky enough to win this volume in a competition. We are firmly in the realm of the folkloric vampire, and the Polish variants of the restless dead as listed in the blurb. The introduction to the book looks into the four types to offer an overview but the main event is a reproduction of various documents (be it passages from books, manuscripts, newspaper reports etc) which mention the walking dead. Each entry is referenced to the appropriate source document, which is essential, though an index may have been a useful addition.

There are some really interesting moments within the texts. The idea of who might become the restless dead and the aspects and habits are fairly interchangeable between the types but – remembering that I primarily look at the vampire in a media sense – what I found interesting was some of the tropes that came up that are not commonly known as being folkloric and more a media invention.

So, several entries spoke about the vampire returning to the coffin/grave at cock crow and some suggested that at the point of cock crow an exposed corpse would die – not too unusual from a media point of view, the idea that the restless dead return to an inanimate state at daybreak can be found in the Vampire and the Devil’s Son (1852), to offer an early fictional example. However, there were several entries that suggested that the vampire would be reduced to tar on the cock crow – and this brings the trope of death by daylight to mind and is fascinating to find a folkloric variant. Another fascinating entry dating to 1873 highlighted a conflation of vampire (in the form of upiór) and werewolf, to quote: “After his death, he was thought to have become a werewolf, who left his resting place at night to wander about the village, visiting houses and terrifying God’s folk, like an omen of the plague…”

Most fascinating was the following entry from the Gazeta Polska, dated 1871, which said about criminals who are insufficiently punished when alive who will “turn their bodies into so-called “strzygas” or “upiórs” (which the populace imagine in the form of bats) that emerge from their graves at midnight”. This is a pre-Stoker and folkloric association of bat and vampire and is, from my point of view, rather exciting.

The main event is presented as is, and so there is no analysis just presentation of the entries – so for a more casual reader this may make the volume less engaging, though it is an invaluable source for researchers (be that of the vampire or Polish folklore generally). The volume uses high grade, thick paper stock. I will quickly mention the graphic (almost pop) art, in orange, purple and lilac that appears within volume as well as adorning the cover - not my cup of tea, I’m afraid, however it is very striking and makes this volume stand out against its academic fellows. 9 out of 10.

Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers – review

Director: Ryan Barton-Grimley

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

Let’s head back to the 80s… the entire aesthetic of this film seems born of a love of the 80s, with a theme song and credits that sounded and looked “right there”, and a particular love of the Lost Boys - the film is mentioned (as are the sequels), the film is set in Santa Muerte (which summons thoughts of Santa Carla) and we get a sign for the “Sam Emerson Water Filtration Plant”. It is also very much a comedy, determined to not take itself seriously.

Sam Emerson Water Filtration Plant

It starts, before those oh-so-80s credits, with a man, on the phone, walking down an alley and trying to convince his girl that they are exclusive. There is a noise but no-one in sight. He calls out whoever it might be when, suddenly a figure appears (obscured for us). The figure attacks…

tent living

We meet Philip “Hawk” Hawkins (Ryan Barton-Grimley) when he wakes in his tent – holding a stake (we later discover that this is his “secret stake” that he carries about his person at all (or most) times). He is in his parent’s back yard and, finding himself locked out, breaks into the house. He preps for work as a security guard and eventually finds the note from his parents… they asked him to move out and not into the garden and the alarm was primed…

army encounter

He cycles off with all his worldly possessions and goes to find his best (and only) friend Revson (Rev) McCabe (Ari Schneider). Rev is a vegan pacifist and is on the beach performing tai-chi. Hawk is eventually late for work and we discover he was dishonourably discharged from the army having served a sentence for murdering a soldier (George Steeves) by sticking a blunt piece of 2x4 through his chest – no one believed he was a vampire. Hawk is deemed to be schizophrenic.

Jana Savage as Theo

That night he sees a vehicle pull up at an empty unit and two vampires and a gimp get out. Or so he thinks, it’s fairly clear to the viewer that they are Goths in makeup. Nevertheless he recruits Rev to help him fight the vampires (though Rev has some stipulations about no killing (with stakes, secret or otherwise), injuring or asphyxiating (with garlic)). He goes to paranoid ex-cell mate Jasper (Richard Gayler) for help also and ends up getting help from aspiring vampire novelist Theo (Jana Savage). Of course it takes a while for Hawk to realise his mistake vis-à-vis the Goths and we know that there is a vampire out there…

Ari Schneider as Rev

So, a comedy. Some may baulk, as the association of Hawk with schizophrenia might trigger, but it isn’t laboured and – given the real vampires – it probably isn’t an accurate diagnosis. More so he and Rev are affable losers who are absolute opposites and yet complement each other. The strength of this is in the two characters, and their interactions, and this is down very much to Ryan Barton-Grimley and Ari Schneider’s performances. I didn’t find it laugh out loud funny but I found it amusing throughout.

Ryan Barton-Grimley

As mentioned, this is a love letter to the eighties – but it also takes a sideswipe at the homophobia and misogyny that could be found in 80s horror through the Hawk character particularly. Hawk is that conundrum of the libertarian – he has a Gadsden Flag patch on his denim vest – who veers towards conservative (whilst essentially homeless) but will take numerous legally mandated breaks and, if you don’t like it, blame the "damn liberals". Whose best friend is one of those liberals… The socio-political commentary is not extensive… but it is there.

I found this to be a fun watch. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Rose: A Love Story – review

Director: Jennifer Sheridan

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

I stumbled over this film and, when I looked into it I found a lot of reviews suggesting that not knowing what the film’s ‘twist’ is about is better when going into it. At this point I would normally apologise and say that the fact that I am reviewing the film spoils the ‘twist’.

However, not so. The underlying truth of the central protagonists – and the ailment afflicting Rose (Sophie Rundle) is broadcast through the early part of the film, not with a sledgehammer to be fair, but a genre fan will know what’s going on early into the story. I think the trouble is that with the phrase “a Love Story” in the original title and with it being marketed (on Amazon for instance) as a suspense rather than horror film perhaps viewers less au fait with the displayed tropes see the final confirmation as a twist.

Matt Stokoe as Sam

What did throw me was the fact that this is a UK set film, I expected to be in the wilds of the US with a couple living off the grid. It starts with Sam (Matt Stokoe) leaving the cabin with a gun and hard locking the door. Inside Rose sleeps and dreams of an animal (I suspect a wolf, we only see a very close image of eye and fur, the image appears once more in film) and then a rabbit. She awakens and Sam, still by the cabin, hears a movement clattering the strings of dangling CDs and cutlery surrounding the house, a rudimentary alarm system, he swings the gun but perhaps it is the wind? He heads into the woods checking his traps – he has caught three rabbits.

veins on finger

At home Rose has sat trying to write on her typewriter – she is creating a novel. He comes in with the rabbits already skinned and gutted, bagged individually. After conversation, where she sends him to have a bath and where his comment about her looking lovely today is taken badly, she gets a mask out and puts liquid inside (for a masking scent) before donning it and opening a bag to start preparing a rabbit. She accidentally cuts her finger and we see that, firstly, she doesn’t bleed and, secondly, a network of veins appear on the surface of her skin as the cut heals.

patiently leeched

Out of his bath, Sam takes a jar of leeches out of a cupboard. He retires to a room with UV lights on and places some leeches onto his leg, opening a book and reading as they suck his blood. In an outer (red lighted) room we see the silhouette of Rose watching him, when he looks up from his book she is gone. Later, as he eats rabbit and veggies, she has a bowl with blood and crushed leeches. To be honest, if you haven’t worked out that she is a vampire (or living variant thereof) at this point then you haven’t been paying attention.

a glimpse in the dark

The film concentrates mostly on the pressure the lifestyle is placing on the couple. We also see that she has to avoid anything that could trigger a vampiric reaction – scent and hunger mostly. At one point she is hungry; he has been out and she couldn’t get into the jar of blood/leeches. He comes back to find her stood motionless in the dark (the generator ran out of fuel), her eyes misted, veins in her face prominent and chattering animalistically. He snaps her out of it by cutting his own hand and putting a cloth to her face that the blood can seep through – indicating that the disease she has is virulent and he cannot let her feed directly.

Olive Gray as Amber

There is also a run-in with a young man (Nathan McMullen) who was meant to bring petrol and mail (a new supply of leeches) on behalf of the person who normally comes and rips Sam off for £200. This forces Sam out into the world to get the petrol himself and, finding the bloke, extracting a violent retribution. This run-in is not the catalyst for the ending (though it feeds into a coda) rather a runaway girl, Amber (Olive Gray), gets caught in a trap, which breaks her leg forcing them to help her, and her presence causes the status quo to fall apart.

Sophie Rundle as Rose

I liked the film. The leads are actually a couple in real life and therefore there was a chemistry between Sam and Rose, but the fictional couple are at a point where the stress of living in a darkened cabin (there are no windows letting in light), off the grid and dealing with the difficulties of her illness, have all conspired to make them less sympathetic in the eyes of the viewer – especially Sam, who has devolved into a level of grumpiness and social ineptitude despite himself.

eating leeches

As noted, the vampirism is an illness (I assume viral, especially given the release date being during the covid pandemic, and aspects like her wearing a mask protecting others from her spoke to this) and highly contagious (through saliva, I guess), there is a sunlight aspect and heightened senses (she senses that Amber is 2 months pregnant) and, of course, a need for blood. The use of the leeches might be slightly reminiscent of Dracula 2001, though somewhat inverted, but was really rather clever. There isn’t much else lore-wise and we never discover how she came to contract this illness nor how they coped with it on first infection.

vamp face

This is slow paced virtually all the way through, so be warned on that count, and there isn’t much in the way of horror (hence not being marketed as such, I guess), bar perhaps at the very end. Indeed it is more of a couple-drama than anything else. The coda shows us that the filmmakers had not forgotten Sam’s altercation but equally, being based on a briefly violent event during the film, one expected more of it. Nevertheless, a respectable 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Occupation (Book I in the Occupation Series) – review

Author: Jeff Dawson

First published: 2011

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Are you ready for vampires to regain their standing and stop sparkling in the twilight? Are you ready for them to take on an opponent more vile, viscous and evil than themselves?

Wait no longer! These are the vampires that filled many nightmares of old. Meet the Romanov and Boirarsky clans. They have waged a war amongst themselves for centuries over feeding rights and inconsequential issues.

All of that changes when Adolf Hitler decides to expand the Third Reich and invades Poland in 1939. The Germans start shipping off their food supply to distant lands. The clans are unwillingly forced to decide if they are going to continue with their fruitless battle or combine their collective forces and take on an opponent worth of their sharpened fangs: The Third Reich!

Vampires versus the Third Reich. Evil never tasted so good. Get a copy today and choose a side!

The review: Jeff Dawson supplied an e-version of this novel, the first in a series, for review and I am a tad torn. The basic premise is very good, I like the idea of centuries old vampire clans suddenly faced with a human evil much worse than they – and so setting the book in occupied Poland at the start of the second world war, and embedding it with the atrocities committed was the framework for an intriguing novel.

I also liked the way he portrayed vampirism. These are day walking vampires. They have hollow cuspids that they suck the blood through and, if turning an individual, using them to force blood back into the victim's system. If they lose their fangs then they cannot feed and will die (I would have liked a little more on what happens to the blood they suck through the fangs, it sounds like it goes straight into the circulatory system). They can feed from dead blood as much as living blood and one of the clans have a bacteriological infection they carry, which means they can turn someone, make them obedient but makes the victim die gruesomely (eyes and brains melting in the head) after three months. They seem slightly stronger than a human but can transform into a monstrous form, in which they are much stronger and their skin becomes much tougher. The standard way to kill is by stake to the heart.

Another interesting aspect was within their mating, which could easily lead to the male or female killing the other but, if successful, not only leads to reproduction but also bonds the two together (and causes them, postpartum, to break away from their clan and start a new one). This bond is described as powerful and I will return to it.

Weaker was the characterisation. The primary vampires are more rounded but more time needed to be invested in all the characters. Beyond the clan leaders and their spouses, most of the characters were interchangeable and (bar one named Yakov) forgettable – this was the same with the human Nazi characters who were essentially a homogeneous menace. Even when it came to the main characters, and taking Nikoli (leader of the Romanov clan) as an example for a moment, his character was more detailed but projected as an abusive misogynist. There was no real nuance to this offered and, as it was clear he had mated with Svetlana, their relationship – in which she actively hates him – didn’t ring true once we had witnessed a mating and were told of the effects that the process had on the couple. The author did put in a redemption arc for Nikoli, but putting more detail into the character would have made that more satisfying and helped the reader to understand how their relationship had become so broken. As it was, redemption seemed rather easily achieved. I was also struck by how naïve the vampires seem to be – but that may have been misreading arrogance.

Further characterisation would have improved the novel, as I have said, but the novel still worked and the strength of the concept carried it. That said, it was crying out for a thorough edit – whilst certainly nowhere near the worst I have come across, there were several typos that the editor should have picked up on. Again, it is testament to the idea that the book continued to keep me engaged despite these. 6 out of 10.

e-book @ Amazon US

e-book @ Amazon UK

Santigwar – review

Director: Joven Tan

Release date: 2019

Contains spoilers

The Filipino folklore of the aswang is often given a comparative association with the vampire, but we should remember that aswang is both used as the genus of a specific folkloric creature and also as a generic term meaning monster.

In this film the term aswang is used, but the main hunter (the Santigwar) also says that these are specifically kamadlang. This isn’t a term I had come across before, and a google left me none the wiser (feel free to educate me on the term in the comments especially if I have taken the name out of context). Be that as it may we have a group of creatures that can shapeshift (though they take on a drooling monstrous form and we do not see other typical aswang shapeshifting), cast magic it appears, and eat human flesh (and virgin flesh specifically for power).

conducting ritual

It begins with an old woman, Nana Rosa (Lui Manansala) – who we later discover is the queen of her aswang clan – ritualistically chanting. Nearby is a young man, whom she bites at one point. In a house that has charms hung at the windows, two young girls (Hasmin (played older by Alexa Ilacad) and Lea (played older by Michelle Vito)) have a box. Their father (Dan Fernandez) stops them from playing with it; it is a Santigwar box, containing weapons to fight evil.

hagridden

They have their evening meal but something is out there and we see something dropped into a pitcher of water to contaminate it. Mother, Siony (Mary Jean Lastimosa), drinks some water and starts to choke, and in a really interesting moment we see her in a mirror and it appears she is being ridden – tying somewhat into being hagridden. When she dies her face seems transformed, twisted – later we hear that she was a daughter of Nana Rosa but abandoned the clan when she fell in love with a human Santigwar and this killing is for revenge. Again later, we learn that after this dad packed the younger Lea off for her safety, whilst he and Hasmin sought to find and kill Nana Rosa.

Jay and Benny

Cut ten years forward and a group of lads are in a diner, they are Aldrin (Marlo Mortel), Carlo (Marco Gallo), Jay (Paulo Angeles) and Benny (Keann Johnson). They are waiting for Aldrin’s girlfriend Ara (Pam Gonzales) as they are going out to her family’s place in the country – though the studious Benny (well, he wears glasses) has to be persuaded to come. As they travel there, there is some not so gentle ribbing of Benny for being a virgin… strange that Ara is the one who brings it up in the first place…

Aubrey Miles as Ynes

So, as they drive they have a near-miss-collision with Hasmin and her dad, almost running them down (albeit unconvincingly) – the latter now seeming rather infirm and during the incident Hasmin picks up the scent of Ara, and later discovers that the region where Ara's family lives is desolate following an epidemic. At the house there is a sister and cousin, Melai (Michelle Liggayu) and Sabel (Emie Conjurado), as well as Ara’s mother Ynes (Aubrey Miles), who seems very interested in Benny – even cooking him a special part of the evening meal. Of course, there won’t be any Mrs Robinson action, as they need him to remain a virgin. But you can guess that the lady aswangs will split the guys up in a divide and conquer routine, keeping them busy until Nana Rosa decides its time for them to die…

Hasmin prepares her weapon

And here it goes wrong… beyond paper thin characterisation there just isn’t enough done with the hunting section. There is little atmosphere and, although there is a death, no real peril as we don’t overly care for the characters. As the aswang hunt the guys, Hasmin is hunting the aswang – she again pretended to be nearly run over (by the slowest moving vehicle ever) in order to warn Benny to leave – strangely he took no notice of her... I mean “leave this place” portents whispered by a strange girl you’ve nearly run over twice in the day surely must hold gravitas?

transformed

The aswang, when transformed, have weak eyesight but strong senses of smell and hearing. Hasmin has a green water that masks someone’s scent and boils in the bottle when an aswang is near. She kills by knife (with another liquid poured on it, type unexplained) and, with her first kill, takes time to salt and burn the corpse – otherwise they can come back… This rule is not religiously followed thereafter, and I don’t know why, as Benny took the time to bury a friend whilst being hunted by a family of aswang.

aswang

This one suffers for the lack of character development, atmosphere and, quite frankly, balls out violence. It might have been a fair action/gore horror had the filmmakers gone that way – but they didn’t. I can’t help but feel that mum and dad’s origin story would have been a more interesting film also. The creature makeup is just that, makeup, and they look like unfrightening drooling things rather than creatures of terror. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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On Demand @ Amazon UK