Drink Slay Love – review

Director: Vanessa Parise

Release date: 2017

Contains spoilers

This is the filmed version of a young adult novel about a female vampire going to high school. And it was via Lifetime… Now before you turn away there was, at least, a good reason for the vampire in high school trope – which we’ll get to momentarily. There was also, within the cliché, one killer line that absolutely raised the bar for this one (perhaps even the score).

It must also be said that I haven’t read the original book and so I don’t know how accurate it is to the novel (bar one major difference that I discovered doing some research). It features a family of vampires but doesn’t give a clue as to whether the vampires are naturally born (as a separate species) or turned – I’d suggest turned and placed with “families” but then one wonders why the kids are teens (and why two are daughters but one is a male ward with the family but not part of it). The film doesn’t tell us.

Fletcher Donovan as Brad

So we begin with a car and Pearl (Cierra Ramirez) is driving Jadrien (Gregg Sulkin) around and speeding. Pearl is our primary vampire girl and Jadrien the ward of the family. She decides she is hungry and pulls into Jim’s Place, a store, and flirts with employee Brad (Fletcher Donovan). He doesn’t know her but she knows his name. She says its his name badge but actually she’s fed there before – victims have no memories of the attack. She lures him outside for a bite.

bird of prey

After feeding (and leaving him alive) she calls for Jadrien but he doesn’t appear to be there. A bird of prey flaps in and lands on her arm and as she speaks to it she is staked from behind, the stake glows and… she awakes at home. Her mother (Tessie Santiago) grounds her as the fealty ceremony is coming and they are hosting it. The ceremony is once a century and it is where the king vampire (Victor Zinck Jr.) tastes all the young vampires and then all the vampires drink of his blood, swearing fealty to him – the family are hosting the ceremony this year.

gaining a reflection

Pearl sneaks out, goes to Jim’s Place and a couple of geeks notice that her reflection is wavering in the mirror (actually she isn’t meant to have a reflection) and manage to capture her. They have her in a cage that she easily breaks out of and they try to escape and actually manage it as the sun rises. Pearl fears the worst but doesn’t burn as she should. Having explored the human daylight world she tells her family what has happened. As they need victims for the ceremony they send her to high school to get invites into homes, so as to make hunting easier. Unfortunately, as well as kind of gaining a reflection and immunity to sunlight, her evil essence has gained a conscience.

Zack Peladeau as Evan

So, what as happened to her? The staking was by a member of a vampire slayer family (that happen to live in the same location, wouldn’t you just know it) named Evan (Zack Peladeau, Being Human), but he is different from the other slayers – he’s a healer and whoever he heals becomes a better person as well. She is his experiment to try and make vampires good. This differs from the books, where she is still staked but by a sparkly unicorn. The rest of the film sees her trying to cope with school life, love and being a vampire with a conscience who is still expected to be evil. Indeed these vampires are damaged by holy water as they are thoroughly evil (supposedly).

Cierra Ramirez as Pearl

This would all be so much fluff – though lead actress Cierra Ramirez manages to steer out of whine and into sass as often as she can. There is, however, a self (and YA) effacing aspect. Pearl wrecking a car in the school car park, on her first day, is not done to save a mortal but to annoy the queen bee (and sneak an invitation into her home for her parents). The killer line is when she is dancing with Evan at the prom and, instead of being grateful for his 'gift' of conscience, she tells him that he “messed up my life in a high-handed alpha male way and changed me to fit your ideals with no regards for my needs”. The fact that she still ends up with him is telling, but the line was a zinger.

in the sunlight

So, score… well it is fluff but competently made fluff and for the audience it is designed for it will hit the mark. For the genre fan it is light, the evil vampires are evil in name but not really in act so much. However the self-effacing aspect is subversive, the message that boys (even the ‘good’ ones) can’t go around changing girls to suit their whims is positive (and, of course, the vice versa is also true). It probably deserves 4 out of 10 for that but I wouldn’t want to score it higher, because fluff is still fluff.

The imdb page is here.

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