Short Film: Bright Lights, Dark Shadows

So, this 2019 short, directed by Ryan Justice, was something of a conundrum as it is primarily a music video for the track All Night by retrowave band Tokyo Rose. However, I first came across it on Amazon Prime as a short film and it does have an IMDb page. Given an internal narrative (albeit a simple one), narration and a whole lot of style I have decided to feature it as a short film (coming in around the 7-minute mark).

Paul Wilson as the Hunter

The story is simple. A man, Julian (Sean Michael Gloria), sits in a bar feeling despair when he makes eye contact with a goth/rock styled women (Kaylee Giza). She leaves, he follows and another man watches – that being the vampire hunter (Paul Wilson), it is later confirmed, who amusingly wears a Van Halen belt buckle and T-shirt (VH, geddit?) Julian catches up to the girl, she leads him to a room and she chows down on him.

fangs

We then get a scene of them both hunting; him after a woman, Daphne (Hadley Green), and her after a biker type dude (Jorge Diaz). This time the hunter won’t be so passive… What will happen, well the answer is embedded below but just to say that the filming is very stylish, some great vampire moments captured. As for the music, well the moniker retrowave suits the band but for me it is quite generic but not unpleasant. The Vampire Hunter uses a gun and in the structure of the short we never discover why it is effective.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK