Dead & Beautiful – review

Director: David Verbeek

Release date: 2021

Contains spoiler

Aimed at being much more a social commentary than a horror film, this film looks beautiful but is ultimately soulless. The social commentary is directed at the super-rich, the exploiters of both people, society and the environment but this is not a new take on the genre – Voltaire in 1764 wrote “We never heard a word of vampires in London, nor even at Paris. I confess that in both these cities there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces.” In this case the city is Taipei.

The elderly woman

The young people we are going to meet seem full of ennui and this is displayed when we meet Anastasia (Anna Marchenko) driving to the airport with Lulu (Aviis Zhong), whose head is against the window of the sports car and she looks thoroughly bored. Ana has to screech to a halt as there is a woman in the road, just stopping in time. At first Ana is angry with the woman but Lulu suggests she might need a hospital, however then the woman, elderly with a tribal tattoo over her mouth, starts pointing at her, her words in a language they (and we) don’t understand but angry… the feel of a curse.

toasting Bin-Ray

They meet Alex (Yen Tsao) in the airport and their collective purpose is to meet Mason (Gijs Blom), who has jetted back into the city (having left to go to Harvard). They end up in a private lounge in a club with a giant cake celebrating their friend Bin-Ray (Philip Juan) – too rich, too quick it is suggested – he couldn’t handle the change in status and that lead to his death. Eventually Bin-Ray jumps out of the cake. They take it in turns to set a stunt or event up, it seemed to me the joke was on Mason and the others were in on it – perhaps not but don’t think too hard about the logistics needed to fake your death and keep four independent friends fooled.

Aviis Zhong as Lulu

This is what they do – they try and stave off boredom. Later we see legends telling us the worth of each person’s family. They all come from billionaires, bar Lulu as her family wealth is unknown (but you can bet it is high, probably the highest). Other patrons are in the lounge but it is meant to be private – they tip off the manager as Mason (first off) starts a fight with the intruders despite claiming that he has been studying Buddhism. Afterwards he wants to take a bus home – to get a feel for the ordinary folks, or learn more how to exploit them says Lulu.

the dead shaman

The next event is arranged by Ana and she takes them on a forest trek. As night falls their guide takes on the role of Shaman – he puts his own blood into a bamboo holder and then a substance, it smokes and they all breath it in. They pass out, there are vivid psychedelic dreams and, when they wake, they all have fangs and the shaman is apparently dead and has punctures in his neck. Freaked out Alex arranges a helicopter to pick them up and deposit them at a family building in the city. There is some panic from Bin-Ray as the sun starts to rise and Alex fumbles the password but they are soon in.

Philip Juan as Bin-Ray

They all have perma-fangs and the film then follows them as they adjust to their new reality. Bin-Ray does some research; the area they were at was the ancestral home of the Arovi Tribe until developers took over the land. His research Is suspect however, given that he suggests that Ana found the Shaman on the dark net and she retorts she found him on Instagram and it was just meant to be a cleansing. He also, somehow, makes a connection between Dutch colonial settlement in the 17th Century and Stoker writing Dracula! They soon discover that they are not affected by sunlight. They try blood, each having different reactions but Alex seems invigorated by it and he really does start to embrace the supposed vampire tropes. Mason refuses blood – opting to be a control group.

real world consequences

The film then twists and turns but at the heart the message is that they were already vampires – dead in their hearts and carrying the arrogance of privilege, using their family wealth (gained through exploitation) to live consequence free and detached from reality. Indeed we get a flashback to Lulu’s childhood and her father’s car being attacked by protestors who yell that he is a vampire. So, the film keeps coming back to that…

stalking the streets

Which makes it not the best watch, because we are sat within that privilege and ennui and the characters are so far removed from most viewer’s experience and have so little in the way of connection or sympathetic traits that it is difficult to build up concern for them. Ok one character goes off the rails more than the others – and his actions do impact ordinary folk but there isn’t enough there to build empathy with those he impacts. In a genre sense it doesn’t equate to horror and as lovely as the film can (and often does) look, splashed in the neon of the city, it is ultimately soulless. The twists are interesting, not that I’ll spoil them here, but ultimately this is style only and character substance is missing – whether that says much of the writer/director’s view of the subject (ie the ultra-rich), is unclear. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon US