In Our Blood – review

Director: Pedro Kos

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Sorry – this is one of those films where the twist is vampirism and, with a couple of clues, they manage to keep that pretty much under wraps. However, as a vampire film, it does deserve to be here at TMtV – so that twist is spoiled. There are other twists in the tale, however, so not all is lost.

The film is in a documentary cut found footage style and as director Pedro Kos is a documentary filmmaker he has an eye for that and males the film work in that regard. It follows Emily (Brittany O'Grady), a documentary filmmaker, and her new employee Danny (E.J. Bonilla) as they travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Before we take the trip we see Emily talking to camera, holding a strangely designed key that she wears around her neck (later we see she finds the key).

E.J. Bonilla as Danny

The opening journey allows us to build some rapport with the two characters. Emily has had a contact from her estranged mother Sam (Alanna Ubach), a(n apparently) recovered junky, who used to use Emily to steal from clinics as a child and who wants to atone for her past. Emily has decided to make a documentary of their reconciliation. Danny, we discover as they drive, has a sweet tooth and a real eye for photography – and I have to say the professional looking filming makes this a cut above many found footage films, which can be shorthand for 'inability to frame a shot' at times. We discover later about Danny’s past with gangs and his struggle out of them (he’s having his gang tattoos removed over time).

dinner

They eventually get to Las Cruces and meet with Sam who seems both very nervous and regretful. They sit down for dinner and then interview her but the interview leads to some upset on Sam's part, intensified by the discovery that one of her friends had gone missing and then, a short while later, was found dead. Sam is volunteering at a clinic to try and make up for the past and invites Emily there the next day. The pair retire to their rather grungy motel. In the morning Emily can’t get hold of Sam and so they go to the clinic, where they are immediately told to stop filing (they do not). But Emily eventually manages to charm clinic director Ana (Krisha Fairchild) and they interview her and some of the homeless who live out the back of the clinic.

a vampire

Sam is still nowhere to be found and there feels like some connection to a gang connected to the cartels. The gang is blamed for putting a bloody pig’s head in their motel and, strangely, the aftermath of that is the rat’s that were eating died and it is confirmed as rat poison… So vampires (and spoilers)… yes vampires are involved as is the trafficking of blood from the itinerant, addicted and other victims who won’t be missed. The vampires are very much in the vampire as addicted mode, with it being said that blood is food for them, but human blood is a drug and they are strongly addicted. There is a hunter involved and the pig’s heads are left by them, covered in human blood to draw the vampires and laced with rat poison to slow them down.

Brittany O'Grady as Emily

I don’t want to spoil the other mysteries at the heart of this and, for me, the biggest strength was the photography. The cast work well but there were some aspects to the whodunnit side that seemed a tad convenient given the reveals at the end. Nevertheless, this worked well and captured the documentary aspect well – clearly because Pedro Kos is very au fait with his craft. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Vamp or Not? The House Was Not Hungry Then

This was a 2025 feature, directed by Harry Aspinwall and the title kinds of says it all. For context I am fascinated by the idea of vampiric buildings and actually wrote about them for Palgrave’s Handbook of the Vampire. Many fans of the traditional vampire form will likely baulk at the idea, but I accept a very broad spectrum of what is a vampire or vampiric.

Some may also baulk at this film as a piece of cinema; almost entirely using static cameras in various rooms of the titular house, to describe it as a slow burn might actually be an understatement. The house has seen better days, unfurnished as wallpaper peels etc. but its sparsely modern look undermines a traditional Gothic air that may have added atmosphere. And yet, I did find myself drawn in.

view of the man

The film takes us through the static cameras so that we can explore the house. Then there is a distant peel of thunder as cars pull up. There are four people come to view the house, shown in by a man (Clive Russell, Neverwhere & Dracula (2020)). He tells them about the house but never leaves the vestibule, visible to us through the glass of the door. As the family look around a sound builds in the background and one by one the people just vanish, the only trace a piece of clothing that flutters down, in one case. Later we see the man eating a Pot Noodle and talking to the house.

the house speaks

At night there is a knock at the door and then the sound of breaking glass and a girl (Bobby Rainsbury) climbs in. She, we discover, is estranged from her father but whether they lived once in the house or nearby was not clear to me. She is searching for him and eventually discovers he is in a hospital or nursing home. The house seems to take to her. Early on we see words on screen, and it feels like chapter titles at first, but we soon discover that it is the house talking to her, the voice silent to us. This establishes that the house is sentient. The conversations are driven, acting wise, by her as the house dialogue is only shown to us as subtitles and sometimes not at all.

squatting

The film then is about her grief re her father and her avoiding the other man when he visits the house; it turns out that he is not an estate agent but the owner of the house deliberately drawing people there (and trying to avoid a compulsory purchase order that will lead to its demolition). Is it Vamp though? Well, the house, we have established, is sentient and is described as hungry. Reference is made to when the house was not hungry (which, if you read the film that the girl once lived there, then we can assume it was not hungry then) and also that its hunger is increasing. How it feeds is unknown, the victims vanish somewhere and whether it then digests them or their energy, is silent in the text. The sentient aspect of the house can detach from the house and reattach to something (a replica of the house in this case). All in all, I am going yes to it being a vampiric building but appreciate that others may disagree.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Diefenbach: Before Dawn – review

Art and story: Benedykt Szneider

First published: 2026

Contains spoilers

The blurb: In a remote village gripped by superstition and rot, a grave robber and a ruthless witch hunter are forced into an uneasy alliance. A cursed settlement. A faith twisted into fear. And a dark nun rosing from the depths of Hell itself. This is unflinching folk horror rooted in medieval dread.

The review: Another indie comic from the Afterlight stable, I was drawn to this due to the folk horror description and was not expecting a vampiric element. Starting with a couple of thieves robbing corpses on a battlefield, one flees when the battlefield rats turn on them and ends up in the company of a witch hunter.

He is taken to an abandoned village, which once had a nunnery and is told the story of a nun, seduced in the night, impregnated and then kept alive by the order until the baby was born and subsequently executed. The father brought her back from the dead and to do this “he made her drink the blood of infants, keeping her in a state between life and death.”

Of course, she is still there, fanged and feral… The graphic is not overly long at 60-pages but is bound better than a standard comic book as it is in paperback format. The art works, a scratchy pen and ink style that works well, adding a sense of dread. There are a couple of typos in the lettering but they clearly have slipped past proofing and are minimal. The story deserves expansion – learning more about the witch hunter would be brilliant. 6.5 out of 10.

Date with a Vampire – review

Director: Jeffrey Arsenault

Release date: 2000

Contains spoilers

Getting a Blu-ray release is this shot on video effort by Jeffrey Arsenault, whose earlier film Night Owl was one I looked at some time ago. This was originally released under Arsenault’s pseudonym Gregory Cabot and kind of straddles the line between horror flick and the softcore sexploitation that he would eventually film under the Cabot name.

opening black and white

Having said that, there isn’t much of a story here (and the story there is takes second fiddle to some naked scenes) and the narrative doesn’t make much sense but, let’s break it down as best we can. Violet (Lori Thomas) has picked up firefighter Chuck (Robin Macklin) in a bar and taken him home. She lives in quite a big house and seems independently wealthy. She offers him a drink, but the upstairs wine has run out and he offers to get some from her wine cellar.

Lori Thomas as Violet

This seemed a bit odd – not only that there was a wine cellar (clearly a basement area) but that the guest would offer to go retrieve. Nevertheless, he does. He hears strange noises (actually a disfigured basement vampire (Joe Zaso, Rage of the Werewolf, Nikos the Impaler & Addicted to Murder 3: Bloodlust Vampire Killer), that he doesn’t see) and then Violet appears scaring him. They have some wine, they have some sex, she admits that her ex was Rachel (Cynthia Polakovich), he doesn’t care that she is bi, she has a shower and they have more sex.

the cellar vampire

The sex, to be fair, was pretty tastefully done but was way too long for the films short 1-hour run time. Anyway, in the second time around she loses control and bites him. He is angry – but not shocked that she is a vampire and he goes for the V word pretty straight off the bat. He tries to leave and collapses. There is a dream sequence (or memory) of Violet and Rachel together, which is odd as the altogether human Rachel sneaks into the house in daylight, takes a shower herself, ends up in the cellar and is got by the cellar vampire and all this seems unconnected with anything and we never discover who he is. Chuck eventually reveals that he was a vampire in a past life – so is immune to turning – but she has his soul trapped (suggestive of being her but that defies logic too).

eat your heart out

And other than the denouement, that’s it. The primary story is way too simple, yet has little logical sense. The sex scenes are way too tame and tasteful to be sexploitative – and are certainly not the titillation that the director would eventually aim for in his art. It is, all told, an oddity but an oddity in a nice set, with good looking art for both the sleeve and the slipcase, a poster, a host of extras including a Cabot short vampire flick, Blood Craving. However, scoring the actual film, 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Wormtown – review

Director: Sergio Pinheiro

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

When is not a vampire film, actually a vampire film? I struggled with how I would approach Wormtown, a film I first watched at Grimmfest 2025. There is a vampiric parasite at the heart of this – as I’ll explore – and more so it takes beats from I Am Legend, though probably more so the Omega Man. The festival programme said the film had “just a pinch of classic vampire lore and a sly tip of the hat to Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND.” I nearly went down Use of Tropes, but there is something essentially Vamp at its heart (for the infected literally and for the film figuratively).

worms in the eyes

It starts with Mayor Joshua (Jim Azelvandre) going for an eye exam. The optometrist has opened up at night for him as he has noticed a light sensitivity. As the eye is examined, worms are seen inside the eye. So… this is the first thing to note. At the heart of this film are worms and this gives a feel of the Strain (I’ll return to the light sensitivity) and, like in the series the worms are easily passed on. The worms have a blood consumption element and we’ll come to that.

a nocturnal existence

So, the film proper takes place where a large proportion of the town populace are infected. The mayor runs a radio broadcast that is the only signal available and plays gentle country folk and talks about the idyllic little town. The populace sleep through the day and the town comes alive at night and, a tad like the Omega Man, modern technology – mobile phones, Bluetooth and the internet – are all shunned. So the infected, like in the Omega Man, shun technology – but there is a reason, as the signals hurt the worms. They develop skin lesions too, much like in the Omega Man, and they act in a cult like way. The film does examine cult behaviour.

Rachel Ryu as Kara

There is a reason, however. When infected, various worms develop acting like a colony. The primary one is the heart worm, larger than all others, coiled round the heart it feeds on the host’s blood – this being the vampiric element I mentioned. They also develop brain worms, which we can assume moderates behaviour. There are uninfected and three women, living in a warehouse area and trying to solve the infestation, are our primary characters. They are Kara (Rachel Ryu) – who is disaffected, hating their life – and the lesbian couple Jess (Caitlin McWethy) and Rose (Emily Soppe), the latter being the scientist amongst them (she taught science at the high school). There are also uninfected living more normally in town, who have the cultists trying to recruit them nightly and there is an Amish community nearby, left alone as they produce foodstuff.

Jess bloodied

At the head of the film some kids get caught out at dawn and one, Tommy (Milo McDonald), is caught in the sunlight. His mother Alice (Maggie Lou Rader) can’t get to him because of the sun and he starts haemorrhaging blood and worms until he dies. The scene is like a vampire in the sun (with added worms). Jess, out scavenging, finds the body, takes worm samples, films the heart worm in the chest cavity and (when Alice cries out from her home) falls into the corpse. This causes a panic, Rose cleans the blood off back at the warehouse, finds a worm burrow, and manages to cut the worm out of her back. However, the worm-folk take it as a desecration of the corpse.

daylight outfits

As the film develops, we discover that Mayor Joshua is holding secrets. One being the state of his body, with the flesh raw and open. Through him we discover this will happen to all the worm-folk, as he puts it, eventually there is more worm than flesh and they are literally eating the infected – they are parasites, they are not in symbiosis. He is also hiding the truth of what is happening in the wider world. He has Rangers, storytellers he says, but essentially the law and some of those move in daylight in specially designed clothing. We also discover that uninfected smell repulsive to the infected and their vision alters so that the dark is bright to them. One character becomes infected and something goes wrong and two heart worms develop and one has to be extracted – it is a visceral scene and a painful process.

sunlight haemorrhaging

I really like this when I saw it at the festival, and enjoyed it more on second view. The vampire tropes are obvious and the worms themselves vampiric, however (though very different) I tonally got a bit of a feel of Stake Land. The practical effects are brilliant, especially the sunlight haemorrhaging. The story perhaps meanders a little and some of the cult themes could have stood a bit more exploration. But I have a soft spot for this one. 7 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Honourable Mention: Creature Commandos Season 1

Directed by Matt Peters and Sam Liu and originally airing from 2024 to 25 (US), Creature Commandos was the first release proper of the James Gunn run DCU, a seven episode animation that does follow Suicide Squad and Peacemaker (which I think fall prior to the soft reboot from DCEU to DCU) – if I have any of that wrong, apologies. It has Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) unable to force humans into clandestine ops (ie the suicide squad) and so she sends a squad of monsters led by Rick Flag Sr. (Frank Grillo) to protect the Princess Ilana Rostovic (Maria Bakalova) from sorceress Circe (Anya Chalotra).

A fleeting visitation

The squad does not contain a vampire however we get two moments were we see the bat-creature vampire Nosferata in the Belle Reve Penitentiary canteen in one episode and later as part of the revamped (pun-intended) squad at the end of the last episode, Her appearances were incredibly brief and not voice acted but the character is part of the DC universe – an evolved animal from the Project Moreau in Superboy she has been portrayed as a full vampire as well. But, as far as season 1 is concerned, a fleeting visitation.

The imdb page is here.

Empire of the Dawn – review

Author: Jay Kristoff

First published: 2025

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: From holy cup comes holy light;
The faithful hands sets world aright.
And in the Seven Martyrs’ sight,
Mere man shall end this endless night.

Gabriel de León has lost his family, his faith, and his last hope of ending the endless night – the Holy Grail, Dior. With no desire left but vengeance, he and a band of loyal brothers journey into the war-torn heart of the Augustin Empire to claim the life of the Forever King.

Unbeknownst to the Last Silversaint, the Grail still lives – speeding towards Augustin’s besieged capital in the frail hope of ending Daysdeath forever. But deadly treachery awaits within the halls of power, and the Forever King’s legions march ever closer. Gabriel and Dior will be drawn into a final battle that will shape the very fate of the Empire, but as the sun sets for what may be the last time, there will be no-one left for them to trust.

Not even each other.

The review: It’s strange, when I came to pull up the reviews of the first two books of this trilogy (this being the third book), I realised that although I reviewed book 1, for some reason the review for book 2 (Empire of the Damned) never happened. Well it is too late now and let it suffice to say that I really enjoyed it and so really anticipated this volume. Firstly, let me cover off that the actual physical hardback is as gorgeous as the others in the series. Illustrated through – with pictures that are meant to have been drawn by vampire historian/inquisitor Jean-Francois Chastain as he draws out the story of how Gabriel de León fought against the Forever King (leader of one of the vampire bloodlines and, we come to discover in this volume, author of Daysdeath – the catastrophe that has almost totally blocked out the sun). We know, from the previous volumes, that Gabe killed the Forever King and that the Holy Grail – actually a living decedent of the Redeemer named Dior Lanchance. Chastain goes between Gabe and his sister Celene, the Last Liathe – a mysterious vampire sect who cannibalise their own kind to save their souls – and there is no love lost between the pair. However between the two the historian hopes to pin down the truth for his Highborn vampire mistress.

Going too deep into the story will be pointless for those who have not read the first two books (like those, this is a mammoth volume) but the world the story is set in is a fantasy one that has a religion similar to, but not actually, Christianity. The characters are drawn in an adult way but beautifully written. One of the concepts I really liked in this was the idea that the capital of the human Empress had furnaces that burned so hot (for smelting and smithing) that they were used to keep the waterways unfrozen and, to attack the invading vampire army they turned up the heat, producing rolling banks of steam that the priests bless – so holy steam rather than water. The story spins from twisted betrayal to twisted betrayal as it speeds towards the end, though the final twist, the final set of falsehoods both work but also feel a tad glib in the execution leading me a little torn over the ending – but that is likely me. A great ending to the series. 9 out of 10.

In Hardback @ Amazon US

In Hardback @ Amazon UK