Use of Tropes: Killers Within

There are many films that touch tropes from the vampire genre but, I’d guess, many do so accidentally or unconsciously. Other films do so absolutely knowingly and a single line in this 2018 Irish film directed by Paul Bushe and Brian O'Neill indicates to me that the filmmakers were deliberately playing with those tropes.

So, rather than vampires we have members of the Reptilian Elite, darlings of wacked out conspiracy theories. Now in some of these theories the reptilians do drink blood, in others they are flesh eaters – and in this we get the second type and that might be enough to say vampire… but in this case I think the filmmakers were taking the tropes and projecting them, rather than make a separate species variant of the vampire.

attack on Amanda

It starts off with member of the Garda Amanda (Sue Walsh), who is in a park with her son Kevin (Cormac Melia) ignoring calls from her ex, and Kevin’s dad, Rick (Jeff Doyle). When she does answer it is about the time when four balaclava wearing criminals beat her and grab Kevin – they want payback from Rick. She awakens at Rick’s place and he confesses they are members of an Eastern European gang who want €600,000 they say he owes them. Despite younger brother Sam (Sam Lucas Smith) defending him, the story comes out that he stole, as a member of the Garda, €600K of drugs from evidence, sold them to the Eastern Europeans, arrested them, testified to have them put away and kept the money.

sinlings

Not to worry he has a plan to get the money and get Kevin back. With military veteran Jack (Johnny Elliott) and the help of Amanda’s brother Neville (Patrick Murphy) they are going to perform a tiger kidnapping on the CEO of the bank where Neville is a security guard and steal a cool six million. Amanda is against it but quickly persuaded that it is the only way to get the money – even using her computer access in the Garda to get details of the man and his family.

Andrew Murray as Philip

The CEO is Philip (Andrew Murray) and he lives in a large country manor (actually Springfield Castle in County Limerick) with his son Carl (Tom Naughten), daughter Claire (Saoirse Long) and wife Sarah (Sinead O'Riordan). That evening, when he gets home, Carl is doing homework – second world war, but the details the teacher knows are wrong according to Philip, they are just what people believe. Claire is getting ready for an important night out (where Philip has chosen the boy) and Sarah is preparing dinner. They sit down to dinner when there is a ring of the doorbell. No one seems to be there but then the gang are in, all wearing masks.

throat out

They zip tie the adults and Claire but Amanda intervenes when it comes to Carl and suggests that he can be left to play with his game. She is meant to go with Rick and Phillip to the bank but Philip persuades them that it is best to go in his two-seater Aston Martin as it will look less suspicious. We do not see the robbery side (just scenes in the car) but it goes to plan. However Carl, eventually, asks to go to the toilet and Neville takes him. A scream is heard and on investigation Neville is found dead, his throat ripped out, and Carl has gone missing. At first they think there is someone else in the house but eventually it is seen to be the family who are the aggressors and they aren’t as human as they look.

fangs

So, as we see them change, we get changing eyes at first (to golden eyes with elliptical pupils) and fangs. When the humans find a photo of them later (which we don’t see) Sam asks if they are vampires and Jack says they are lizard people from the conspiracies. It is this line that makes me think that the use of tropes was deliberate. So what do we have. Fangs and changing eyes have been mentioned and they feed on humans. We see that neville’s throat has been ripped out and Claire bites Sam’s neck when she gets over excited (having seduced him).

reptilian form

The seduction is down to an idea that although these are a separate species (that pre-dates humanity and had mighty cities before the cataclysm) and a different genus (reptile rather than mammal) they can interbreed (and do, to widen the gene pool) but the reptilians can only breed in certain very rare windows of opportunity (hence Claire going out that night, it was specifically to breed). They are very strong (so there is no answer as to why they didn’t just break their bonds but have to have them cut, other than not revealing themselves) and very fast. When I say very fast, we are talking True Blood fast, and each run ends in a ‘power stance’. Indeed, they are so strong and fast that one wonders how the humans could hold their own at all.

Baphomet worship

This point is especially pertinent as they seem able to shrug off bullet wounds (there isn’t rapid healing that I can tell, the wounds just don’t seem to bother them). Killing them is down to a ‘nothing lives without a head’ line. For a pre-human/pre-mammal species one wonders at why they worship Baphomet in a goat form. They can take on their natural reptile form or emulate humans at will and are telepathic. Philip admits later on (during an exposition piece to Rick, in a nearby pub where all the humans know what they are and fear/serve them) that he recognised Neville’s ‘stench’ as soon as he walked in the house.

bitten

So there is a definitive use of tropes here and a tie in to those tropes by asking if they are vampires. Even the idea of a robbery leaving the thieves trapped with (a) vampire(s) has been done in the genre. The film itself is ok if you don’t look too close but becomes problematic if you do scrutinise it; with the creatures being over powered and the robbers' desperate plan making little sense (especially for an active member of the police who left her partner due to his corruption) but it at least lets us sympathise with the home invaders.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK