Short Film: Love in Vein (2020)

I haven’t spotted an IMDb page (at time of writing) for Phillip Brown’s Love in Vein – however an interrogation of the film’s Facebook page suggests this dates to 2020 and was the director’s film school opus, which they funded through crowdsourcing. Set in Brighton it connects the vampiric hunt with dating apps and runs at just under 15-minutes.

It starts with the dating app Winked-In being flicked through then we see a man reclined (possibly dead) on a bed and, in the bathroom Evelyn (Ell Hope) cleans her teeth and we see blood in the sink. She flicks her fang with a tongue, we notice her lack of reflection and we can make out bite marks on the victim’s neck. She gets a new date via the app.

Ell Hope as Evelyn

Arranging to meet Josh (Sam Bates) in a restaurant, she is there before him – she checks her bag for a bottle within. He comes into the restaurant and they speak, his small talk seeming to flounder. Having got their wine, he orders a veggie burger, whilst she orders a steak. She points out a painting on the wall as a means of distraction as she doses his wine – though he apparently knows more about the artist then she does. She works nights in a pharmaceutical warehouse – he reveals he’s a vet.

Sam Bates as Josh

There is something in their conversation and she has a change of heart – switching their wine, which she then downs when he calls her a chicken for not drinking. The vomiting in the bathroom thereafter might be her bringing the drug up deliberately or it might just be a reaction to drinking something other than blood. The date, however, takes on a new meaning for Evelyn, though her need to feed is also piqued…

licking blood

One thing I did like about this, other than some extremely nice photography, was the confident use of tropes and the way they were visually captured. For instance, a woman (Johanna Worcester) is in the toilet with a nose bleed and Evelyn is left to face the blood on the porcelain wash basin. Her licking up the blood is a common enough trope but the actual shot was really nicely done. The short is embedded below.