Short Film: The Vampire Within

By director Richard Poche and released in 2016, this also goes under the name Vampire Vixens but I think the title I’ve looked at it under suits the story better.

We start off with Alice (Halie Islava) clutching her knees as someone searches, calling out for two other persons, and gets whopped over the head and dragged off…

Sarah (Christina Johnson, Money, Vampires & Weed) is speaking to Alice telling her that she *needs them* as she is so hungry. Alice, for her part, suggests that she won’t hurt anyone else again. She suggests that Sarah could get other food; meat or blood, maybe? Sarah responds that Alice knows the meat has to be human and blood on its own is disgusting. She also claims that the air hurts her, so she can’t venture out herself.

Alice and Sarah

This, of course, is interesting as Sarah is our vampire (and named as such in dialogue as well as in the film’s title) and she dislikes blood (sans flesh, anyway). Following this Mr Harris (Cliff Poche, also Money, Vampires and Weed, Crimson & A Candle in the Dark) shows up. He is Alice’s caseworker and the house is a halfway house. She “hurt” a neighbour and has to cooperate with Harris or she’ll end up somewhere worse. The live-in carer, Lisa, is not around and Alice claims that she has taken the other residents out (her van having broken down, she hired one, Alice suggests, explaining why it is in the driveway).

Sarah behind Carolyn

Long story (well, not really, its 31 minutes in length) short and Alice whops Harris with a hammer and Sarah has him, reducing him to bones and leaving Alice to clean up the mess. This is where I started having a problem with the short as then her new caseworker Carolyn (Kendall McCann) shows up. She is sold the beach line without blinking and suspension of disbelief was stretched and snapped as missing residents, workers and a caseworker – whose diary would have been known – have not elicited any form of official response or sent up warning flares.

snackage

Alice speaks openly about Sarah – but she is dismissed as an imaginary friend/figment of the imagination. However the more Carolyn speaks to and is around Alice the more she might actually notice that someone else does appear to be in the house… There isn’t much to add lore wise except that we do discover Sarah killed Alice’s parents (assumed to be a robbery gone bad), she seems to be able to appear and disappear at will and seems to want her ‘helper’ as prey sometimes fights back, so she can be hurt.

manipulation

Despite my reservation around the logic leap in the story the general premise of this is interesting and, with some tightening of the story, it could make a tight little short. That said the filming does look a tad on the cheap side – though the blood effects are nice and visceral.

The imdb page is here.