The True Story of Hansel and Gretel – review

Author: Louise Murphy

First Published: 2003

Contains spoilers

The blurb: A poignant and suspenseful retelling of a classic fairy tale set in a war-torn world, for readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, We Were the Lucky Ones, and Lilac Girls

In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel." They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called a "witch" by the nearby villagers. Magda is determined to save them, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children. Louise Murphy's haunting novel of journey and survival, of redemption and memory, powerfully depicts how war is experienced by families and especially by children.

The review: This came onto my radar when I read that there was a vampire aspect and there is, sort of, as I’ll explain. However, that aspect is just a detail almost and, for consistency, this perhaps should have been an Honourable Mention but it is just so poignant I wanted to give the book a full review.

The book tracks the events surrounding two young Jewish children in Nazi occupied Poland. Their father has been able to survive due to his engineering skills and, as the book begins, we see him on a motorbike, fleeing with the children in a sidecar and their stepmother riding behind him. However, they are being pursued by three Nazis. He manages to stop out of sight and sends the children into the forest but not before the stepmother gives them new names, Germanic and not Jewish, Hansel and Gretel.

The children, like in the fairy-tale, find the house of a witch – though this is no wicked witch but a wise woman who supplies the nearby village with cures and acts as midwife. Nevertheless, they all refer to her as a witch. She decides to protect the children, gets them false documents and the book follows their story and that of the parents who escape and fall in with the partisans.

The vampirism comes in the form of an SS Oberführer who is looking for children to “eindeutschung” – children who display Aryan traits, who will be stolen from their parents and sent to Germany to be made German. Whilst there he sees Magda’s niece Nelka, recently given birth and has a ‘look’ he feels to be Aryan. They kidnap her baby and force her to comply with letting him take her blood for transfusions (her blood type matches his). When asked why, he replies “The idea came to me from my days as an athlete. Sometimes transfusions were given to increase energy during the last Olympic games. Your blood will refresh me and serve a higher purpose.” He suggests her blood will help him remain strong and she is not the first he has done this to. It is almost acting like a vampire, though the stealing of blood is by scientific means of drawing it out by needle. Needless to say he is unaware that there is some Roma in her ancestry.

It is a detail within the story, though the fact that he is holding the baby causes the finale to move in certain ways. It adds an extra layer of monstrousness to a character who is drawn entirely without sympathy, and rightly so. Whilst the story follows the Hansel and Gretel story closely there is nothing supernatural in this but the book is incredibly well written and harrowing as a horror, but it is the horror of fascism and the holocaust. A must read. 8.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Vampire Alice in Wonderland – review

Director: Les Sekely

Release date: 1997

Contains spoilers

I’ve used the title for this film above although, in terms of content, it is fairly meaningless. Indeed the alternate title of Vampire Time Travellers, Part One: Bite her in the Butt is much more descriptive – though luckily there was never a part two - there is an apparent prequel and we'll cover that.

This is a straight to video 90s flick that is comedic in design (if not in outcome consistently or often) and relies on strangeness to underpin its very thin plot. That said I have seen worse.

Jillien Weisz as Lorelei

We start with an intertitle that states that “Some years ago, the Alpha Omega Sorority was being terrorized by a vampire named Natalia. She was eventually destroyed.” The next intertitle says, “But, Natalia had a sister…” That sister was called Lorelei (Jillien Weisz) and we see her having killed a woman (Alexandra Raines Lewinson) and then turning her attention to her roommate (Adriene Nichols). Suddenly the killed one sits up, possessed by something. She speaks magic words and the living roommate vanishes (thrown forward a short way through time) and has called locals who put Lorelei in a coffin and seal it with a cross.

cross on coffin

Five years on and Sue Ann Marie (J.J. Rodgers, Sorority House Vampires from Hell), known as Sam, is going to pledge for Alpha Omega. Her sister was a member; indeed, she is the Sorority Sister mentioned in the intertitles, called Buffy. Just to note therefore that Sorority House Vampires from Hell would appear top be the prequel to this. Rodgers is uncredited in the role of Sue Ann in the later film, and the main characters are Buffy and Natalia. It is also worth noting that this film came out the same year as the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. At the same time someone encourages two young lads, who are reading mucky magazines, to go to the old Crenshaw Place to get more magazines. They remove the cross from Lorelei’s coffin.

stalking Sam

And so, Natalia (we only see a fanged mouth, as she is on the other side, and she is not credited) wants Lorelei to get revenge – by killing Sam. She goes to the pledge night and goes after Sam but can’t bite her as she is related to someone who vanquished a vampire and, therefore, Lorelei needs to feed more to be powerful enough to attack her. So, she attacks the other pledges starting with musician Zoe (Kat Facchino, Vampire Night) who she attacks in the shower. This is an excuse for some T&A, of course, but it is the only such in the film so it wasn’t overly gratuitous with the use of such scenes. She can’t bite Zoe either, as the five years have considerably weakened her and is informed that the only spot a weak vampire can bite a victim is on the butt.

in sunlight

Eventually all the pledges have been turned and Sam has to take them all on – this is with the help of a vampire hunter disguised as a Light Man (Jimmy Jerman, also Sorority House Vampires from Hell & Vampire Night) an electrician and also something else… However, things are a little bit sketch show (as we move between characters and their dreams/fantasies/memories) and pretty surreal (though not necessarily artistically so). It isn’t great but there are a lot worse films out there. There isn’t particularly any sfx to write home about and the acting is all at a strictly straight to video level.

destroyed

As for vampire lore, again there isn’t much – sunlight kills as does a stake through the heart and Buffy’s hammer and stake are with a grimoire that has the time travel spell – useful for moving vampires forward in time into daylight. The burnt makeup was poor but the charred vampire effect looked quite good. However, a twist where a character is actually a vampire is undermined by us seeing her sat in daylight at the start of the film. Crosses ward vampires off and Lorelei can turn into a bat 25% of the time – but also accidentally turns into a range of objects/creatures that rhyme with bat. 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

New web series: Sheigala: Vampire Business Women

Directed by Andrew McPherson and produced by the wonderfully named Fu Man Pooch productions, Sheigala: Vampire Business Women is an Aussie web serial, described as “paying homage to all things 80s”, which is a comedic satire that, at the time of writing, has three of its six episodes available.

The background is that, when the universe formed, there were two races of sentient beings. The male tepaniki, who were academics and philosophers, and the female sheigala, who became adapt at hostile business practices. The two races were (and are) reliant on each other for reproduction.

Sheigala

However, the sheigala will ravage planets so that, as well as being vampiric in a fanged, exploding on staking and allergic to garlic (and lavender) sort of way, they are the very form of vampire mentioned by Voltaire, “stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight”. Indeed they are the exploitative face of disaster capitalism, devouring the resources of a planet and moving on to the next.

staking their own

The Queen of the Sheigala, Vandaz (Helen Miller), has come to Earth (precisely Victoria, Australia) and Ismaragad (Jack Sumner) of the tepaniki is looking to stop her – though his fellows seem apathetic to the cause. Also drawn into this is ordinary bloke Steve (Seb Muirhead), who went to hide out in the bush with his mates (leaving his pregnant wife at home).

What will happen – well you can find out over at the Fu Man Pooch YouTube Channel. Episode 4 drops on Halloween.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? You Won’t Be Alone

This 2022 Macedonian film is a folk horror (sort of) film directed by Goran Stolevski and I was struck, as I watched it, by similarities to Catalonian vampire flick All the Moons, at least in broad strokes of the theme, though this is certainly more expansive in the experiences of the central character, Nevena (Sara Klimoska). That thematic similarity is not the reason for looking at this as a ‘Vamp or Not?’ The reason for that is that the central mythology strays into vampire-trope territory.

It starts with a cat running through the fields, as children play, and entering the domicile of new mother Yoana (Kamka Tocinovski). The mother has already shooed away the children (not hers but using her home as a hiding place in hide and seek). As she chased them out she warned that the wolf-eateress would get them. Breaking into her domestic scene is the witch known as Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca) – she had entered in the form of the cat.

with the baby

It is worth taking a moment to look at Maria – she is one of the so-called wolf-eateresses but she has little in the way of hair and her skin is a swirl of scar tissues. We later discover that this is due to being burnt as a witch. The distinguishing feature for the witches in this is the thick black claws on their fingers, and the large dewclaws coming from the palms. She looms over Nevena in her cot. Yoana tries to bargain for her daughter, though Maria plainly states she wants a drop of her blood (the inference being that a baby contains no more than a drop).

Kamka Tocinovski as Yoana

Yoana suggests that she lets her bring up the daughter until 16 and then Maria may have her and the witch agrees, though there is a price and she cuts at the child’s mouth with a claw, leaving her mute. Once Maria has left, Yoana takes the child to a disused cave (that was clearly once used as a sacred space) in the belief that she will be safe there and then tells the local villagers that her child has been taken. She raises the girl in the cave, not allowing her to see the outside world.

Old Maid Maria

The ruse does not work and Maria comes, able to enter the cave at the allotted time, to claim the feral girl. The mother tries to prevent this and then we hear screams off screen. The mother marches to the girl and takes her out. As she marches out over the hills we see her throwing viscera away and suddenly she is Old Maid Maria. The witches can shapeshift and they do this by stuffing the viscera of the creature (Maria was the cat and later a wolf, for instance) or person they wish to emulate under their skin.

the dewclaw in the palm

Maria tears a hole into the girl’s chest and spits into it. The witches are created through witchspit and a witch can only turn once (much like the vampires can only turn one person in All the Moons). A small amount of fire over the wound heals it and Nevena suddenly has the claws. Maria tries to teach her the wolf-eateress ways but despairs – for instance Nevena is more interested in adopting a pet than drinking the blood of creatures they capture and it is the blood that’s important, it gives them their strength. Eventually a frustrated Nevena throws a stone at Maria who abandons her (and yet always seems to return, trying to manipulate Nevena onto the path she has chosen for her).

wolf-eateress

The majority of the film shows the various lives Nevena lives, taking the place of a variety of folk. She becomes an exact replica of the person she steals the identity of but is still dumb and, of course, does not have their memories. She can take on both male and female forms, able to fully function in either skin. Unlike All the Moons, where the vampire mother vanishes by accident and is lost through the majority of the film, Old Maid Maria deliberately leaves her but returns semi-frequently mocking Nevena’s attempt to have a normal life. The film also reminded me of Hellbender but where the daughter in that wanted to reclaim her witch heritage, Nevena wants to claim a lost human life.

tasting blood

So, we have the ability to turn another, a form of shapeshifting but, more importantly, we have blood drinking. As the film follows Nevena’s lives we see little else in the way of powers and this is why I said “sort of” when it comes to this being a folk horror. It is folk, certainly, and there are horror elements but for the main this is a drama with Nevena experiencing life as both male and female, adult and child. There is also a backstory shown for Maria, in the form of a folktale. This was a brave film in terms of the themes it covered and whilst it might be slow in places it is worth a watch and I would say these are vampiric witches.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

I Dream of a Psychopomp – review

Director: Danny Villanueva Jr.

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

A psychopomp is a being tasked with guiding the souls of the recently deceased to the afterlife. The movie uses the word in that sense and, of course, prominently in the title of this portmanteau film.

The wraparound in this case follows Kerry Reynosa (Elohim Peña) who survived the car crash that his wife, Evelyn (Kulani Kai), died in. Having experienced a supernatural event when he went to view her body, it becomes apparent that he can now see and communicate with the dead. He is visited by a psychopomp (Steven Alonte) in his dreams who guides him on how to use his gifts. The stories then are designed to explore aspects of death and communicate the lessons he and (in the case of the story that led to the review) Evelyn need to understand aspects of death.

Jillian Lebling as Elayna

In many respects these are not horror segments, however the segment entitled Answers does have more of a horror side to it. The segment we are interested in, Until Forever, may have a vampire but it is much more a musing on the implications of living forever. It starts with a young girl, Elayna (Jillian Lebling), riding her bike along a street at night. She stops and looks over at a church. We then see a man, Obed (Jay Rattle), check that the church door is chained (on the inside), after which he limps away. Elayna, however, has somehow got inside.

Ben Shaul as Adriano

She walks into the (clearly abandoned) church and places a bottle on the floor and then hides in the shadows. A man, Adriano (Ben Shaul), enters and takes the bottle. He drinks the contents (which are not shown but we can guess at blood). He then addresses Elayna and says she can come out. She knows what he is (hence the bottle), though the film never addresses how she knows or, indeed, use the ‘V’ word. The two talk.

turning Gabriel

He laments time, which he calls his enemy, and the fact that he is stuck with forever, that his story has no end. He longs for death, in fact. She suggests that time is her enemy also and removes the wig she wears – revealing her bald head and we understand that she is undergoing some form of cancer treatment. She wants him to give her more time – by turning her – but he is opposed to the idea remembering how he once turned a friend, Gabriel (Reinhold Von Bolt), who became a murderous bestial creature. However, Adriano quickly relents and fills a chalice with his blood… he wants her to reconsider and there is a price to be paid before she can drink…

awaiting payment

This was a very nicely shot segment, with a decent atmosphere offered by the location. It wasn’t, as I said above, horror. Rather it was a musing on the idea of living eternally and what that would mean and the essential stage of our life’s journey that death represents. It wasn’t perfect – whilst shorts have to condense their stories often, the speed at which characters changed their minds made their responses feel feeble. Also, the dialogue felt stagey and Elayna’s dialogue, particularly, felt too old for her. Whilst I get that her terminal illness may have given her an older perspective, it felt off, especially as she was not a child vampire but a young girl. That said, Jillian Lebling’s actual performance was mostly good but her crying felt like acting, rather than natural. All that said, it was an interesting exploration – the score is for the vampire segment only. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The Mouth is a Coven – review

Author: Liz Worth

First Published: 2022

Contains spoilers

The blurb: Have you ever seen a ghost? In Starling City, there are spirits on every street corner. Everyone in town seems to have at least one ghastly tale to tell.

So, it’s no wonder that a place like this breeds people like Blue and Julie, who summon demons just for fun and are obsessed with a local legend of a vampire named Matter. They hang out in dark clubs on a desolate downtown street and hope, desperately, that Matter will one day find them.

Because if they could become vampires, all of their problems will disappear. Just like the movies, they’ll never get old, and they will never die. They won’t have to worry about working or making rent, because the mundane world will no longer apply to them.

One night, their wish comes true: It turns out Matter is real. Except Blue and Julie soon learn that being a vampire isn’t exactly like you see in the movies. Abandoned, they are left on their own to figure out how to live as the undead – not to mention what to do with all those dead bodies piling up.

The review: When describing the Mouth is a Coven, Liz Worth has said “The style is literary, poetic and sometimes experimental, with occasionally unreliable characters whose grasp on reality loosens through a haze of occult rituals, blood pacts, and late nights at the local goth club.” I reproduced this because it actually describes the book really well.

It is set in Starling City and, as I read it, I felt it had a vibe of Santa Mondega from The Book with No Name at times, or even Bad City from A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, not that it was the same as these locations but there was an air. Within the city we meet, first, Blue and later Julie who both obsess over the urban myth of the vampire Matter and, eventually, help invoke the vampire.

I say invoke as Matter is as much an elder God as a vampire and when brought into corporeal reality possesses a body and so we have vampiric possession in this. Whilst Matter is a God, with an agenda that is beyond mortal wishes, when Blue and Julie are turned their vampirism is perhaps not so grand and brings about definite problems as described in the blurb. In both the case of Matter, as a higher vampire, and Julie and Blue, as pale facsimiles, the volume offered an unusual take on the genre, which was welcome.

The joy of the volume is within the prose, as experimental and lyrical as they are (as per the author’s description) they are also evocative and magical, building characters you want to follow and weaving a world that draws you in. I marked one passage as I read it, not only because it contained interesting, none standard, vampiric imagery within it but because the prose struck me as macabrely beautiful:

“Around here, people talk about things that happened years ago. They say the soil in the cemetery on Cedar Road had gone black, that the man who’d sanctified the ground had a crow’s eye for a heart. It was said that when the dead were buried there, the roots of nearby trees wrapped themselves around the decaying bodies to suck up whatever life was left behind. As winter changed over to spring, the tree blossoms no longer held the youth of new growth, but hung heavy, their petals black with old blood. As spring gave way to the sweat of summer, those trees would glisten, weeping crimson.”

I have mentioned the two texts above that the city itself reminded me of, but I also had a feel within the prose of the works of Poppy Z. Brite and Tanith Lee, again more a vibe than anything else and the setting of the Goth scene, of course, played into that. It was great that the characters were simultaneously compelling but also not necessarily reliable witnesses and I adored the play throughout the book on the power of urban myth and the collective nature of reality. I absolutely devoured this volume and at no point was it less than a joy to read. 9 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Werewolf by Night

The 2022 Halloween Marvel one-shot brought Jack Russell (Gael García Bernal, Vamps), AKA Werewolf by Night, and Man-Thing (Carey Jones) to the screen and, one hopes, to the wider MCU. This, in turn, kindles a hope that this will lead to a more monster-centric strand to the MCU (despite its market saturation). We are due a Blade reboot within it (with filming, as I type, delayed but with Mahershala Ali’s voice, as Blade, appearing in an Eternals’ post-credit scene) and with Werewolf by Night and Blade in the mix (not to mention Deadpool) there is hope for an appearance of both Dracula and the Howling Commandos.

Dracula, alas, is not in this nor, indeed, is a functioning vampire. What we get is an amusing, black and white one-shot that, at under 60 minutes, does not outstay its welcome and summons a feel of monster films of yore.

He's never looked so alive

The reason for the mention is due to a narrated opening in which we see a picture that is clearly a vampire and, later, a vampire’s head mounted on the wall of Bloodstone Curios/Manor (I am using the comic book names for the manor but it is clear that the building has not been repurposed as a curio shop at this point). Both the head and the picture are in bat form. In film Jack, posing as a monster hunter, is asked whether he killed any of the beasties on display and he says not but does point to the vampire’s head saying, “Him, I fought a few times. He's never looked so alive.” It is a fleeting visitation, at best, but the episode is of genre interest if only for the threads it could later connect to.

The imdb page is here.

Hood Vamps – review

Director: Gregory Tucker

Release date: 2003

Contains spoilers

By the credits a 2003 release film, and lacking an IMDb page that I could find, this relatively short feature (it comes in at 72 minutes) appeared on Amazon VOD and only came in SD format. Now, having watched it I can’t really say that HD would have done it any favours unfortunately.

The film follows quite a well-to-do set of people but never seems to manage to pull off the setting, for instance graphic created contents of a cabinet will be mentioned later but underline how the film tried to work around the lack of budget but failed.

a victim

The film begins with a set of TV broadcasts culminating in a news report regarding a serial killer who is attacking single middle-aged men and who has police baffled. We see a man, dead in a chair, blood at the throat and a figure in a hoody. We then cut away to a gallery and the owner (with an accent that was layered with affectation) is speaking to a client on the phone, discussing Egyptian artefacts. He gets off the phone and tells Michael (Antoine Jones) that he must visit the client that very day.

Dominique and the sleaze

Michael isn’t happy as he is meant to be taking his girlfriend Dominique (Tracy Weaver) to an exclusive restaurant that he has waited two years to get a booking with. He has to go to the client, however. We then cut to Dominique, who is a successful business woman (its never clear in what, but I suspect as an advertising executive), batting off a sleazy client with poise and skill. Before cutting back to Michael arriving at his clients’ home.

a vampire's red eyes

The door is answered by Rochelle (Leslie Ballard), assistant to Jamari Jefferson (Earlisa Joiner). She speaks to Michael and the scene underlines just about everything wrong with the film. Firstly, it is here where we get Michael looking at a cupboard with some “interesting pieces”, the camera pans up a (obviously, low-res, computer generated) view of the cupboard, which in reality contains none of the pieces as the budget hasn’t covered such props – indeed later we get a full discussion of a scarab that isn’t there.

bad framing

Then, the dialogue, throughout, feels weirdly unnatural (not even stagey just wrong). For instance, in this scene, a woman who has never met the man before asks “So, are you married or committed to anyone at this time?” The words feel odd, the delivery isn’t great either to be fair, and we know it is just a clumsy tie in with the killer mentioned at the head attacking single men. As Rochelle is speaking to Michael the camera seems incapable of keeping her framed in shot – at times her head is cut from shot. We get inconsistent lighting and focus as camera angels change and the obligatory sound issues that one would unfortunately expect (noise on the soundtrack in one of the scenes being the main one).

weird dreams

Jamari then comes into the room (kind of just appearing) and within moments Michael is dismissed and will be contacted the next day. There is no appraisal of the artefacts for sale (difficult as they aren’t physically represented in the scene, of course). It just feels really clumsy. Jamari is the vampire and she has a kind of impact that Michael (who misses his dinner reservation window but is forgiven because he brought home a fruit salad in a plastic tub and some sparkling red grape juice) then has a nightmare about Jamari that night – though the film hinted later that these were dream invasions.

doing a Palpatine

There is a vampire hunting Jamari through the centuries and a cop, Stone (Gregory Tucker), hunting down the killer (who is Jamari, of course). The lore seems to be made up as it goes along. We do get a victim turning, who becomes a ravening white-faced ghoul and is then killed by the other ancient vampire vanishing in a bad sfx on death. We also get Jamari able to shoot lightning out of her hands in a Palpatine kind of way.

dying vampire

But over all this is just poor amateur filmmaking. Everyone has to start somewhere, of course, and issues like the props/cgi were a brave attempt to fulfil a vision that the budget conspired to thwart. However, the bad framing of actors in shot was very amateurish and damaged the finished output, as did the poor dialogue and delivery thereof. There was some fun imagery occasionally around the vampires, but not so fun that it saves the film. 2 out of 10.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: A Vampire's Heartbreak

This short film directed by Kevin Forte clocks in at just over 15-minutes and was released in 2019.

It follows born vampire John (Anthony Fagan) and the events with his love, and turned vampire, Lori (Cynthia Loren).

However, as the film starts, we see John wake up alone in bed. He reminisces about Lori and very early on we see, within the dialogue, that melodrama is the order of the day. His memories go back to being with her as a mortal. Of her asking to be turned to spend eternity with him and him obliging (turning takes place through drinking a vampire’s blood – we do not see him bite her).

being turned

He remembers her foibles, of her reluctance to kill and therefore he choosing the evildoer as their victim (the first we see is a murderer (Patrick Heraghty) who has killed four victims). All of this is before David’s past catches up with them.

bite

I mention the melodrama and that is, by far, the biggest feel I took from this. There is a wider story that could be drawn from this, however. A scope in the world-building that Kevin Forte could exploit if he so wished.

The imdb page is here.

Blood & Sand: The First Book of Rue – review

Author: Aisling Wilder

First Published: 2020

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Ancient vampire Rue keeps to herself. It makes it easier to fight the constant hunger that plagues her. That is, until the night she catches Grace-a not very good vampire hunter-stalking her through the streets of Dublin. Something about Grace is achingly familiar. And strangely irresistible.

Rue soon learns that Grace is herself being hunted, and is thrown into a battle she never wanted, to save a woman who wants her dead. As Rue unravels the horrifying and treacherous plot, she also uncovers a secret about Grace that could change everything. Along the way, Rue finds herself drawn to the girl, and is forced to choose: Continue her solitary life of safety, or risk it all for love?

Through it all, Rue recalls her creation and formative nights in an ancient world far from the rainy streets of Dublin, a world where she learned to live, love, hunt and kill.

The review: This book by Aisling Wilder is a book of two halves, intertwined together, with one chapter set in modern Dublin followed by one in ancient Ur and then Babylon. Rue, the vampire, was Asharru, a temple priestess in Ur who is chosen by Lilitu (whose name, of course, is thought to have been linked to the later Lilith figure) and turned when the city is sacked. The book then follows her development as a vampire in ancient times and, through this thread, we discover the source of vampirism in this mythology, which is similar to that employed by Anne Rice in the Vampire Chronicles, though the story is unique to this volume and the vampires quite different to that older series.

In the modern day we follow Rue as she becomes entwined with Grace. Though primarily a story of vampires, demons and Nephilim in this volume, we do get an interaction with the fae and, through them, another form of vampirism in the shape of the drinking of dreams. We discover that whilst the more advanced fae can control their feeding, more primitive fae, like sprites, will go too far, drinking a person’s dreams dry and leaving them an “aimless shell”.

The setting of modern Dublin is well realised and gives an evocative setting – we also travel into the dimension the fae inhabit, with realities layered on top of each other. The modern story thread is urban fantasy in style and works nicely, contrasting well with the ancient thread. The characters are nicely drawn, with Rue shown as a vampire trying to eschew feeding on people and struggling with the bagged diet (when we meet her in modern days she has awakened after a black out period that saw her pouring her blood stock literally down the drain). Vampire blood is addictive and will make the mortal drinker slavishly devoted to the vampire, turning is much more involved than simply blood exchange and I liked the idea that damage to the individual whilst mortal will impact the turn – for instance a wound may spend eternity opening, healing and opening again, and mental health damage might cause the turned vampire to lose their mind. We also get information on Nephilim blood, that will allow a vampire to daywalk temporarily, causes much quicker healing but is addictive for the vampire. Blood generally will heal the vampire though more slowly than angelic blood, and the vampire can be damaged quite badly (a substantial fall is going to break bones, for instance), but the vampire cannot heal during daylight hours no matter the amount of blood they imbibe. So, despite her great age, Rue can be vulnerable to danger.

I enjoyed this – it was a well envisioned story, the past and present mapping well together not only in tone and plot reveal but in story impact, but mostly because Rue was a great character, not perfect, she had issues but was rounded well and came across all the better for that. 7.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

House of Darkness – review

Director: Neil LaBute

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

This was watched on the big screen at Grimmfest 2022, released fairly close to the Invitation on its theatre release. I have seen similes drawn as they both have a Dracula connection but they are very different beasts. The other is a Dracula film (even if his name is never uttered in film). For me this broadcasts its vampire status by naming the first female character we meet as Mina (Kate Bosworth), actually named Murray in the credits but not mentioned in film, and naming the second Lucy (Gia Crovatin, Van Helsing) but it isn't actually a Dracula film. There is also the ubiquitous castle (named a castle in film, though also referred to as a manor house, it is an impressively sized building) that has that vampire/castle/gothic tie but I don’t think it was made as much a part of the film generally as it might have been – it is there, it looks impressive and a door refuses to open once (and then opens on its own), but the building isn’t made a character.

arriving

And character is what this is all about. It starts with a cave and… something… in the foreground... not quite clear... but quickly we are at the estate gates opening as a car comes in and in the car are Mina and Hap (Justin Long). We don’t actually learn their names until later in the film. Hap is short for Hapgood and, when this comes out later, Mina mentions having known Hapgoods before. Hapgood is a minor name used in Stoker’s novel. It becomes readily apparent that the two have only just met and he has given her a lift home. There is a moment where there is a sound and she says it is the wind but it may have sounded like a distant howl. She invites him in.

Hap and Mina

The house lights go off just on entry and she says the electric is always cutting in and out and builds a fire in the sitting room. As he enters, he sees a person in a dark alcove addresses them but then there is no-one there, a mirror only. Perhaps Mina was correct when she suggested that out in the country people often see and hear things not there. Now, the thing with the film, is that although it throws in occasional off kilter moments it is driven by conversation mostly. Hap is drunk (his driving her home in that state is mentioned later) and somewhat clumsy. He borders on low-grade misogyny (he gets a text when Mina is making drinks and phones his friend, and the conversation is low grade locker room and overt sexual bravado that includes a request from his friend for photos of Mina – presumably compromising ones – though Hap rejects the request).

Gia Crovatin as Lucy

Mina is playing with him also, steering him to say things that are easily misconstrued as (or actually are) misogynistic dominance and Hap seems uncomfortable saying some of the things but does anyway. She also makes him admit that he can be less than truthful, when he is probably in the realm of lies through omission and little white lies. It does come out that he is separated from his wife. During a kiss Mina does bite his lip and draw blood. When Lucy appears, embarrassing Hap as he and Mina are becoming more intimate as she does so, the dynamics change – not in his favour, though he begins to assume that the sexual opportunity has become more adventurous.

falling asleep

There is a moment where Hap falls asleep and wakes beaten and tied to a chair in the cave. The cave, once he gets out of his bonds, has a burnt-out car and the thing we saw at the head of the film was a pile of men’s shoes but then he wakes in the sitting room. Which is reality? The cave relates to the lore and… Well, it takes us most of the film before we get to the lore but it is more backstory than anything and I won’t spoil it. The vampirism (broadcast through the film and its (often subtle) use of aspects of the megatext) is only overt at the very end of the film and I can’t spoil what happens with that.

Mina and Lucy

What I can say is that this is a film that will divide people, I’m sure. It is absolutely reliant on the skills of the actors who are all excellent. There are power shifts as the conversations take place but if they shift to Hap it is by consent in order to allow him to dig deeper into the hole that he doesn’t realise he is in. He is in turns embarrassed, defensive and assumptive – one gets the impression that he is ill at ease in the art of seduction. However this means the film is very talky – it could be easily reproduced on stage – and many will find this boring. I did not, I enjoyed the performances and I enjoyed the journey. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Vampirus – review

Director: Ryan Ohm

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Whilst I think the film title poor, it feeds directly into this film’s pandemic setting – in Chicago during Covid-19 lockdown (shelter in place). However the pandemic, whilst referenced and (with its empty streets) the backdrop to the film, fails to be the primary narrative subject. The setting does, unfortunately, manage to obfuscate some of the acting – especially around primary actor Ashleymarie Jones, who spends a great deal of the film acting from behind a facemask.

In fact, this film is actually about relationships but we’ll get to that.

Eva masked

It starts with a guy (Chachi Sabate) out on the empty city streets. He realises that a couple in shelter are in coitus and peeps in on them. Withdrawing as his phone vibrates he tells the caller that he is just on a walk, denying the truth that he is having a cigarette to boot, and then sees a figure swathed in black, Eva (Ashleymarie Jones). She says that this is when he should run and he does, she follows, sometimes appearing ahead of him (this is the only example or hint of anything slightly supernatural/super-powered). Eventually she stops playing and catches him – as he fails to speak to an overworked 911 – and smashes his head repeatedly till he dies.

feeding

Hidden with the body, Eva speaks directly to us and this is a conceit within the film as she repeatedly breaches the fourth wall. She intimates that she only kills bad people – like the Peeping Tom. I remember thinking at the time that her bar was set really low, that whilst the guy was creepy, her rationalising his execution (essentially) did not actually measure to the severity of the crime. Compared to, say, A Girl Who Walks Home Alone at Night this feels more an excuse than an actual ethic code – we will return to this.

dragging the corpse

So she gets home and is dragging her victim, taped into black bags, into her basement flat when she is spotted by upstairs neighbour Ace (Michael Holding). He is trying to chat her up and get her to hang out when his flatmate Walter (Kyle Dodge) appears and spews down the stairs. This gives Eva her get out but she does agree to return upstairs after she has done a couple of things. Later, sat with Ace she tries to avoid food, has a vivid fantasy of killing him and then does acid with him. She wakes in bed next to him and quickly leaves but we hear him say that he knows what she is.

Michael Holding as Ace

Thereafter he manipulates (through a combination of charm, pleading and blackmail) his way into her life. For herself she does find him strangely charming. They go out (sunlight is a myth in this) and he encourages her to feed on a homeless woman (Paisley Blackburn), but Eva says the woman has done nothing warranting an attack. She does speak to her, and this is where the bar is low; it is when the homeless woman assumes she was going to give her money and calls her out for not doing so, that Eva attacks her. This is not a bad person, just a desperate one and Eva’s bar is shown to be not only low but a salve for her conscience. That said Ace reveals himself, repeatedly, to have no bar and no qualms regarding murder – in and of itself that should be a red flag.

self-feeding wound

Because, all in all, this is a film about a toxic relationship and manipulation – interesting as the manipulated party in this case should have all the power. I do have to return to Eva’s bar and say she does try to maintain it. She has a bandaged, but oft bleeding and ugly wound on her arm and that is where she has fed on herself when she has not found the right type of victim, which can be read as self-harm. She also has a journal, in which she records rules (think Zombieland rules of survival). The vampirism can be spread and Eva refers to it as a condition.

dreams of killing

The acting is varied in quality and, as I mentioned, the wearing of masks doesn’t necessarily help. There were moments that reminded me, tonally, of Habit but this was not consistent. The relationship between Eva and Ace, whilst odd in conception and power dynamic, felt pretty darn natural. Montage scenes padded the film (and one is fourth wall referenced as a part which we might want to avoid) and could have, for the most part, been discarded or curtailed without harming the structure. The film feels like a budget production, though that is not necessarily negative. This, I think, deserves 5 out of 10 (I did consider lower but it felt churlish and the exploration of toxicity is interesting).

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US