Short Film: Vampire Couch Trip

This 2017 short film was directed by Devin Dugan and comes in at just over 17 minutes. The basic premise is that four vampires hire the services of a psychologist, Dr Hazel (Nick Breslin), to discuss their issues (mostly around a road trip gone bad).

The film starts with Dr Hazel driving to the appointment, the radio playing “Vampires in my Neighbourhood” whilst we get intermittent flashes of dead office workers – this slaughter is not referred to in session, as it were.

The first vampire we see Hazel speak to is Remanence Radu (Maral Milani) – though she prefers to be called Remi. She starts off talking about ‘dirt bag goth kids’ thinking blood drinking is cool. Her idea of cool is travelling, she wants to see the world and be part of history rather than an observer of it. Yet when Hazel suggests she can travel she is dismissive of the idea. She also complains about her brother, Coax Radu (Jeffrey Hammerstein), who she predicts will talk about not meeting a significant other.

attack the cop

Coax does, indeed, mention this – though the doctor is somewhat surprised that he can’t find a decent night life in LA. Next he speaks to Draw Aldea (Wesley Lambert) who is with his girlfriend Allure Vulpe (Kelsey Redmond). The story, as they tell it, develops to a truck stop massacre and then, a couple of days later, the eating of a cop (Adrian Gomez) who recognises the vehicle they’re in as the one described from the truck stop. That happens in the car park outside a dairy queen. Mostly we don’t actually see any of the action, it is just mentioned and establishing shots used – clearly due to budgetary constraints.

kids' choir

The vampires suggest that it isn’t their fault, that they don’t want to hurt anyone, it just kind of turns out that way. They recount that they were now wanted over 6 states and ran out of gas. They walked, looking to hitch, but soon realised it was only an hour till dawn. Now I could forgive the day for night shots used but the idea that they were then picked up (an hour before dawn remember) by a woman (Gina Dugan) and the people carrier had a kids' church choir group in it was a story credibility stretch. It did lead to an amusing moment however as the vampires recall the kids singing kumbaya – the looks on the vampire’s faces, especially Allure’s, was priceless.

And its there I’ll leave the blow by blow. I think you can guess what happened to the choir but why, you might ask, are these vampires unburdening themselves to a shrink?

The imdb page is here.