Vampire Sunrise – review

Director: Scott Shaw

Release date: 2014

Contains spoilers

This is a first on TMtV, as it is the first review I have done of a Scott Shaw film. I was aware of the director/actor (who has 111 directorial credits and 94 actor credits on IMDb at the time this was written), aware that his projects were clearly low budget, but I hadn’t seen any of his films – many of which feature vampires.

In some respects then, I feel like I have perhaps missed a trick, when it comes to critiquing this film, as perhaps I need a grounding in his oeuvre. This is, I understand, a re-edit of his 2009 film Vampire Abstracta with nudity removed and some footage added. It is also a Zen Film. This, according to his Website was, “Formulated by Scott Shaw, the primary premise of Zen Filmmaking is that no screenplay should be used in the creation of a film.” In truth, it shows and not in a good way.

Scott Shaw as Hunter VonCrestor

Now Zen Filmmalking might bring the Dogme 95 school of filmmaking to mind, at least in part, though Dogme had a set of rules and “In Zen Filmmaking there are no rules and no definitions”. The big difference, of course, is that unfortunately Scott Shaw is not Lars von Trier. It needs mentioning that this is not just any old piece of Zen Filmmaking, speaking about the source film, Shaw’s website says “Vampire Abstract (sic) was created to be Scott Shaw's swan song to any remnants of traditional filmmaking.” That, for a viewer, is not helpful.

Ash and Hunter

Opening with the character Hunter VonCrestor (Scott Shaw) sleeping next to his lady, wearing both a crucifix and a cop badge and holding a bottle of wine. Hunter wakes suddenly. He goes to see the (vampire, I think) priest Father Frank (Walter Collins) concerned that there is a glitch in the space time continuum. We then get a backstory, via clips and voice-over, of him being a slayer who was seduced/accosted by a demon and became a daywalking vampire. Along with another man, Ash Mason (Kevin Thompson), in the same boat they went through time helping people and eventually become cops.

Jill Kelly as Vixen

There is then a story of ‘vampire murders’ with victims with slit or bitten throats. There is also a storyline about Hunter looking to ascend (vampirism is a path to spiritual ascension it seems). There is a lieutenant Rinaldi (Darin Costa), who we see repeatedly offering almost identical dialogue as he drives, called about victim after victim – though we see no investigation in between – and complaining about the two men (who work for him) being on his crime scene. There is also a woman, appearing from time to time, called Vixen (Jill Kelly) who repeatedly touches herself but does little else – I assume her role is bigger in the other cut.

it's Man Work... whatever that means

The lack of screenplay is telling. The actors struggle to string coherent dialogue together, making it up it would seem, and frequently repeating themselves. Because of this there is no emoting but when Shaw is in the scene it becomes worse. Though he does occasionally offer a line he mostly sits silently, shrugging and not offering the other actor any wall to bounce from. The film repeats scene after scene – not only the Rinaldi scene but watching Shaw, for instance, eat Chocula cereal with chopsticks.

meta, applied like a brick to the head

Is there anything to add – not really. The film tries to be meta, referencing other Shaw films by, for example, having Rinaldi hold a file with previous Shaw film posters in it or another character mentioning that they had a Rock n' Roll Cops lunchbox, suggesting that Hunter is known to be Shaw. There is a scene when Ash is being interviewed and subtitles explain that he is not in shot because vampires can’t be filmed. Later he is in shot and a subtitle suggests they can be filmed if they are in a film! In fact there is a tendency to punctuate parts of the dialogue by adding it to the screen as a subtitle for no real reason.

vampire attack

I guess there is something there, elusive to me it seems, as I guess people do buy Shaw’s stuff but I have either missed the boat or, more likely, it is Shaw (as a creative) who is marooned. Be that as it may there was something vaguely hypnotic about the entire thing, so I won’t give it no points at all but score it as 1 out of 10. If other Shaw films are just as incoherent they might not be so lucky score-wise.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK