Teenage Vampire – review

Director: Aaron Lee Lopez

Release date: 2020

Contains spoilers

There was a 1989 film called Teen Vamp – obviously a similar title – I have said film on DVD, indeed I had it prior to starting this blog and hence you won’t find it reviewed as it is so bad I could never find the necessary motivation to rewatch it for review. In many respects I just wanted this to be better than its nearly namesake – and it is… though that’s a mighty low bar.

This, unfortunately, does little else right, it is a bloodless (mostly) affair that owes more than a little to the Lost Boys for its primary twists and plot points.

Pam and Chase

It starts with Chase (Claire Tablizo) and Pam (Jaeden Riley Juarez) at a bowling alley – though Chase is particularly poor at the sport, they have been taken in by the team (of older players) the Slayers – and they’ve got them t-shirts. The Slayers, you’d think, would come into this later… and they do… sort of… it is a really half-hearted affair that might be said to mirror the involvement of Grandpa in the aforementioned The Lost Boys but without any panache and with a feeling of afterthought.

meeting Sin

Anyway, it is the start of school and Chase is getting a lift off Pam (and refusing a lift to little brother Dean (Tres Allison)). Chase and Pam are far from being part of the cool kids and they vow to say yes to anything (the definition of anything being mild in the grand scheme of things). New kid Sin (Gabby Garcia), with her cohorts Lucy (Sophia Laia) and Violet (Callista Willeford) get up in the girls’ faces (and get Chase by the neck) and new Cheerleader Coach Mrs Rooney (Cynthia Fray) intervenes. She suggests Chase and Pam try out – they do, with Chase getting on the team, as a consolation Pam is made assistant coach.

comic

So, suddenly Sin is nice and invites the girls to a party (her parents are away) and they pitch up to the big house with eerie red lighting and Chase is encouraged to drink from a goblet of blood – which she does, thinking it a hazing. When she wakes up the sun is bright, her reflection fades in and out (though after that scene tends to stay) and occasionally fangs pop out. But she is only a half vampire until she makes her first kill, and until then can be restored to humanity by killing the head vampire… oh, I wonder where I’ve heard that before. Young brother Dean is suspicious, his suspicion fed by a (very amateur looking) horror comic… oh, I wonder where I’ve heard that before.

initiation

So, there we have it. The vampires are strong and sportier and popular and… look, the vampire gang in the Lost Boys were cool but still outsiders. This was, of course, fitting with the concept that the vampire most often represents the outsider. Whether it was down to a misunderstanding of this or a deliberate (and if so, bravo) turn-around by the filmmakers, but the vampires here are not the outsiders – they represent the top social strata of high school life. Chase and Pam are the outsiders and it is vampirism that brings Chase popularity and confirms her place in the in-crowd.

stake through shoulder area

The vampires find sunlight annoyingly bright only and at one point say that only a silver knife to the heart can kill them. However we then see successful stakings (wood with garlic rubbed in) and use of holy water. In fact it is apparently enough to stake through the shoulder area, rather than the heart. There might have been an indication (when half-vampire Chase goes to buy booze without I.D.) of eye mojo but the red eyes, fangs and hiss, combined with the clerk (P.G. Marlar) peeing himself, suggests it was intimidation and fear rather than mesmerism. The school and student body seemed unmoved by students and staff going missing.

the effect of holy water

So this mostly missed. As I mentioned, until the slays at the end, where some blood was present, this was a mostly bloodless affair. I know that it might be argued that it was for a young target audience but both Goosebumps and ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’ were able to add an uncanny atmosphere and, often, genuine scares to vehicles aimed at the same age group. This is listed as a comedy but generated no real laughs and was pretty gag-less (perhaps bar one pratfall that limped into action). The acting was ok, the actors had little to work with, but the awful hissing all the time detracted and didn’t fit. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.