Director: Charles Band
Release date: 2024
Contains spoilers
Release date: 2024
Contains spoilers
Full Moon Pictures return to the vampire genre, this time with Charles Band himself at the helm and we get a fairly short feature with a limited number of main cast and sets, which manages to be interesting as a concept and starts to explore the world of the influencer but falls short of providing a social commentary (not that it needs to) and limits itself in the process.
It starts in, what seems at first glance, a sparsely attended masquerade party where some of the female guests may be hiding their faces but not their breasts, but is latter described as an S&M club. A person, later revealed as Arturo Valenor (Sean Ohlman), puts on some glasses and we see, POV, that they are a camera live streaming and shows the views and subs. He walks to a blond woman (Piper Parks) and pulls her hair, then beckons to follow him – which she does.
He takes her to a bar area and the bartender takes a drink and doses it with something red (and blood like). Arturo takes the glasses off and offers her the drink but she is reluctant – perhaps it is drugged? He admits it is and demands she drinks it, which she eventually does and, afterwards, he states it was his blood. She is inebriated and half carried, half dragged by a man wearing a gimp mask into a room with a bed, her dress pulled down. Arturo, wearing the glasses again, bites her…
The film then flips to an intro for a web show called Church of Chills – a paranormal show hosted by the acerbic Alex (Aaron McDaniel), who is assisted by Edwina (Emma Massalone) and Juniper (Kaitlin Moore). It is internet schlock, broadcast from a disused church. As they prep for the next episode Juniper finds the stream from Arturo but it is dismissed by Alex as fake. When they find further footage they change his mind and they put the feed into one of their episodes.
This gets Arturo’s attention and he manages to track them down psychically – a cool idea that he can follow the source of their stream that way, a tad blown by depicting it as a pair of giant floating eyes (a pov camera would have been more effective). He is less than pleased but daylight breaks the link… Juniper decides to run, Alex preps to broadcast more (by putting garlic powder round the church entrances and making bodged together crosses) and Edwina researches – discovering that Arturo had tried to bring about the vampire apocalypse a century before but now has the means to gather followers to succeed.
With essentially two primary internal locations (the club and the church interior) with a couple of external establishing views, this doesn’t have a lot of room to grow and the characters – especially the vampires – are really 2-D. There are some nice blood moments but the wider story is kinda hobbled on with no real depth and no explanation as to any universe mechanics. Despite this the concept remains intriguing. The protagonists are played really well, with limited material to work with. We get a moment of vampiric possession (I think) and an awful cgi flock of bats. This isn’t the worst film out of the stable but an effort with the script and some more locations could have lifted it, for sure. 4 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK (with a Full Moon subscription)
 |
| streaming |
It starts in, what seems at first glance, a sparsely attended masquerade party where some of the female guests may be hiding their faces but not their breasts, but is latter described as an S&M club. A person, later revealed as Arturo Valenor (Sean Ohlman), puts on some glasses and we see, POV, that they are a camera live streaming and shows the views and subs. He walks to a blond woman (Piper Parks) and pulls her hair, then beckons to follow him – which she does.
 |
| ready to attack |
He takes her to a bar area and the bartender takes a drink and doses it with something red (and blood like). Arturo takes the glasses off and offers her the drink but she is reluctant – perhaps it is drugged? He admits it is and demands she drinks it, which she eventually does and, afterwards, he states it was his blood. She is inebriated and half carried, half dragged by a man wearing a gimp mask into a room with a bed, her dress pulled down. Arturo, wearing the glasses again, bites her…
 |
| broadcasting the Church of Chills |
The film then flips to an intro for a web show called Church of Chills – a paranormal show hosted by the acerbic Alex (Aaron McDaniel), who is assisted by Edwina (Emma Massalone) and Juniper (Kaitlin Moore). It is internet schlock, broadcast from a disused church. As they prep for the next episode Juniper finds the stream from Arturo but it is dismissed by Alex as fake. When they find further footage they change his mind and they put the feed into one of their episodes.
 |
| following the stream to its source |
This gets Arturo’s attention and he manages to track them down psychically – a cool idea that he can follow the source of their stream that way, a tad blown by depicting it as a pair of giant floating eyes (a pov camera would have been more effective). He is less than pleased but daylight breaks the link… Juniper decides to run, Alex preps to broadcast more (by putting garlic powder round the church entrances and making bodged together crosses) and Edwina researches – discovering that Arturo had tried to bring about the vampire apocalypse a century before but now has the means to gather followers to succeed.
 |
| bloodied |
With essentially two primary internal locations (the club and the church interior) with a couple of external establishing views, this doesn’t have a lot of room to grow and the characters – especially the vampires – are really 2-D. There are some nice blood moments but the wider story is kinda hobbled on with no real depth and no explanation as to any universe mechanics. Despite this the concept remains intriguing. The protagonists are played really well, with limited material to work with. We get a moment of vampiric possession (I think) and an awful cgi flock of bats. This isn’t the worst film out of the stable but an effort with the script and some more locations could have lifted it, for sure. 4 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK (with a Full Moon subscription)
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