Violet’s Prey – review

Director: Kelly Thompson*

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

*the film credits Kelly Thompson as director – Amazon credits cinematographer Seth Sosslau.

Lockdown themed films were a sure thing, and this film backdrops the Covid-19 pandemic but then fails to do anything except have it as a mentioned backdrop. It is, without a doubt, a micro-budget film and it gives me no pleasure to write negative reviews of such films but… The film is poor, there are good ideas but the filmmakers had neither the budget nor the skill/experience to pull them off. Rather what we end up with is a pretty confused mess that implies it is within the Buffyverse without outright saying it.

Dick on the bridge

We start with Dick (Brandon Beckham Aylor) on a bridge. It is daytime and folks wander around but Dick takes his belt off and uses it to tourniquet his arm before shooting up. The syringe contains a red liquid (blood?) and he reacts almost immediately, tilting his head back ecstatically and then standing, licking his lips and looking predatory… The film goes back a month and we see him with Ruby (Kelly Helen Thompson) walking, dancing in a carpark and carving their initials into a table…

talking to captives

We then see Ruby on the phone, Dick is missing she says. She has heard about the outbreak, how you are meant to stay in and wear a mask if you go out but she has to find him – perhaps Violet (Wood Judy) and Clide (Bishop J. Stark) know where he is? She goes to their house (the film shifts to black and white) sees a large bearded man (a mask), runs from him but is grabbed. We then see a man threatening a group of captives. He has a cross drawn on his face and demands they sing…

Ruby in hospital

This is a prime example of the film going wrong; the film shows us him threatening captives (including Dick), but we neither see the prisoners nor the torture and murder he inflicts. Further, the film cuts between that scene and images of Ruby captured (by the man torturing the prisoners, it transpires) and locked in a room, all the while counting through the days the virus is around – indicating that the events with the torture take a while. Eventually Ruby wakes in hospital. He let her go off screen…

the vampire and Violet

So, what’s going on. Well it turns out that Violet, some time before, was in financial dire straits when there was a kerfuffle in her yard. A man and (unknown to her) Ruby ran into the yard and started fighting, each grabbing long sticks. Ruby was victorious and Violet went out to find the man dying and helped him indoors. He was, however, a vampire and had to kill her – until she pled mercy as Dick needed her. So, instead he gave her some of his (black and viscous) blood – a drop is not enough to turn but will heal, he says, and in a perfume would allow a person to raise an army (presumably bestowing charisma). Violet decides to make money out of it.

blood at mouth

Trouble is, Dick got addicted to vampire blood and turned and then turned friends (which made a nice source of more blood for Violet) and she discovered that if a human overused it (presumably in the aerosol version) they grew old. Ruby was a slayer but did not see that Dick was a vampire, which strikes as odd. Now the day-walking is out with the Buffyverse (as a general thing) but Ruby is named as a slayer and mention is made of *her* and has Ruby seen *her* – it feels like it's referring to Buffy herself. The virus is something the vampires concocted to kill slayers but it is out of control – of course this could have then been a different/fictional pandemic but there is a covid banner on a TV news show.

Kelly Helen Thompson as Ruby

Violet, conveniently for budget and locations, has somehow lost her billions but Ruby works with a cop (also Brandon Beckham Aylor) to bring her down anyway. So, I mentioned issues… as well as the really poor kidnap, torture, murder scene that failed to have victims in film, the film jumped around without offering narrative clues as to why or where, and there were scenes where there were characters talking but no dialogue sound. This was, I believe, deliberate but the music that was meant to be the focus was incidental (rather than dominating the scene) and it looked like we should have heard the dialogue.

brandishing a cross

There was nothing to write home about the performances in film and the fight choreography wasn’t the best. Worst of all the film’s climax was anticlimactic. Despite being just under an hour in length the film dragged with the pacing well out. That said there were some good ideas – I did like the idea of the vampire blood being used in a perfume, the idea of the effect and the irony of the side-effect. It wasn't enough to save the film though. 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK