Director: Katsuyuki Motohiro
Release date: 2016
Contains spoilers
This made for TV film is based on shōjo manga the Poe Clan, though this is set in modern day Japan, as opposed to 19th and early 20th century Europe, and features different characters in the form of vampires Akira (Shingo Katori) and Maria (Ayami Nakajô). The term vampanella has gone and whilst the V word is mentioned the actual vampires just refer to the clan.
Like the manga there is a deep layer of melodrama to this, though I felt they lost the gothic edge that the original source leant to the storytelling.
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| the victim |
It begins with a woman (and music lifted from the soundtrack of Dracula (1992)) who has entered a restricted area to take photos of the city skyline. She feels someone nearby, though she shrugs that off, but is grabbed and pulled to the ground and then strangled. The next day, as police survey the crime scene, we see that there are ligature marks on her neck but also two wounds in her throat and discover she is victim number 2.
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| umberella |
Akira and Maria have returned to the city and head to the second-hand bookstore owned by clan member Maejima. Some ten years before Akira had been involved with a young girl, Kaori, who reminded him of his mortal daughter and whose parents had been killed. He couldn’t turn her at the age of ten but promised her that he would return, ten years to the day, and if she still wanted to she could go with him (and be turned, of course). Whilst there a house has been rented for them and a job found for him as a substitute English teacher.
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| eyes |
We get some of vampire rules early on as they are reminded to ensure they breath, have a pulse, and cast reflections and shadows - all of which they have to consciously will. Akira goes to meet Kaori at the assigned spot but is delayed when he notices a lovers’ quarrel where a man is dumping his girlfriend as he intends to marry another. She cuts her own throat. By the time he gets to the car the man has vanished off and he performs emergency first aid, saving the attempted suicide’s life (he was a doctor when mortal). In the meantime, Kaori has been attacked and killed by the serial killer (choked, but not drained due to a drunk stumbling by) and the hair pin Akira previously gave her taken. Akira gets there and (posing as a passer-by) waits for the police.
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| sucking from a rose |
So a maverick detective on the investigation squad instinctively knows that Akira is connected somehow (just not how) and his side investigation reveals that the man may be over 100. Akira and Maria start to look for the actual killer. We see Maria bite and both of them suck energy through hand contact and we also see them suck the life from roses. Maria is made to come across as weak, mirroring Marybelle in the manga, but in this she comes across as languid and disinterested. This is the issue, there is melodrama aplenty but the apathy of the vampires is not scintillating – even with Akira, who still cares about mortals.
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| sucking energy |
Further, this is meant to be a police procedural (the Japanese title can be translated to Stranger: Monsters who Unmask a Criminal Case) but whilst we get some investigation of them by the detective the actual hunt for the killer is detail sparse and Maria simply tastes blood of the (at that point) latest victim and knows who the killer is. The killer is introduced to the audience in the last act with another suspect and the film throws clues at the other suspect in a way to lazily obfuscate the real identity (who is delusional, not actually a vampire). Meanwhile the detective’s side investigation just ends and moments of Akira’s lack of reflection being seen by a schoolgirl, whose mother he taught years before, come to nought.
Somehow the melodrama keeps this afloat, just, and the vampire lore, which is taken from the manga, is interesting. 4 out of 10 is disappointing, however, given the excellent source material.
The imdb page is here.
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