Night for Day – review

Director: Russ Camarda

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Sneaking on to Amazon Prime is this competent but ultimately tame flick that had an interesting concept that might have been expanded on and that was, perhaps, a missed opportunity.

The film starts with a variety of scenes showing folks we will meet in the film. Central to all this, however, is Vincent (Russ Camarda), a guitarist and the primary vampire. Having picked up a voicemail from Derrick (Chris Smith) expecting to see him later, he heads out to his job – lead guitarist with a house band. He is late, the owner is less than impressed, even with the excuse of him finding getting up difficult at that time of year… this didn’t necessarily gel later on when the owner reveals he knows what vampires are and that Vincent is one.

Carolyn Morrison as Laura

Derrick is there and he and his female vampire entourage are picking up a young couple looking for sexual adventures. Vincent’s gal, Laura (Carolyn Morrison), is there and he serenades her with a solo. In an interval, one of her friends invites them to brunch (something Vincent can’t do given the time) but Laura, after her friend has left, says she is not interested in that – rather she wants him to go with her after work and travel to see her family and watch the sun rise on the beach (she doesn’t know he’s a vampire, obviously). The request becomes an ultimatum.

Russ Camarda as Vincent

So the film then follows Vincent through his night. He has left it a while between feeds and so needs “a fix” but he doesn’t drink live. Unfortunately, his contact at the hospital, he discovers, has lost his job (for siphoning blood supplies, we can assume). His night takes in going to a funeral home for reserves, nearly capitulating and joining the live drinking Derrick and deciding to sod it all and take the risk of the sunrise to keep Laura. He is also being followed.

fangs

His tail is Vanessa (Vicki Baum) a vampire hunter with a personal score to settle. She is part of an organisation called the Preservers – and this is the interesting aspect that might have been expanded on. Though we see her, we see little more of the group (bar one other member in flashback). In dialogue we get that they seem to have been inactive recently but they also appear to be an ultra-right Christian-centric group and I think it would have been more interesting to explore them and use them as a societal lens with the vampires as the other suffering through their orthodoxy. The caveat to that is that such a choice might have bogged down any main story.

feeding

As for the vampires we get to know they are a genetic variety of human – their parents need to both carry a recessive gene. They age slowly (Vincent was born in 1906) can sprout fangs and I suspect any human killing level of damage would be enough to kill them. Sunlight is inconclusive though it is avoided and one human character describes his mother, who was a vampire, being killed through the sun. Infrequent and (presumably) non-live feeding leads to premature aging – Derrick makes a comment about the grey in Vincent’s hair. Derrick wears a cross as a mocking affectation.

suffering with guilt

The principles did what they needed to in this, with Russ Camarda personable and a genuine chemistry apparent between him and Carolyn Morrison. That said, the anguished, guilty vampire schtick actually prevented a layer of viewer sympathy. The filming was competent, and this was ok, it’s just… it didn’t set my world on fire. There were interesting ideas that the filmmakers appeared to have decided didn’t need capitalising on any more than they were, but were actually far more interesting than the story being told. 4.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK