Interview with the Vampire – Season 1 – review

Director: Various

First aired: 2022

Contains spoilers

Also referred to as Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, this TV adaptation of the opening volume of the author’s famous series of vampire novels courted controversy amongst fans from the very beginning. The cries of outrage were loud as fans discovered that Louis de Pointe du Lac, the vampire being interviewed, was to be played by Jacob Anderson – a black actor. Let me make this very clear from the outset, Louis is a fictional character and his ethnicity does not matter – the acting ability of the person cast is important, the writing is important but ethnicity not so. Jacob Anderson is magnificent in the role.

Jacob Anderson as Louis

Ok, to be fair, the change of ethnicity did lead to other changes. Still in New Orleans, the time frame was brought forward to 1910 rather than 1791, allowing for the plot to show racial tensions rather than the original timeframe, in which Africans were enslaved in America. There were other changes within the story, as we’ll touch upon, both from the 1976 novel and the movie adaptation.

Sam Reid as Lestat

Louis, living in Dubai, has reached out to writer Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian, Blade Trinity) to interview him and write his story. They previously encountered each other in the 70s and Molloy has the scar on his neck to prove it. Louis sends him the tapes he had made of their interview to entice him. His story runs thusly… Louis runs a brothel in New Orleans, providing for his family – a mother (Rae Dawn Chong), brother (Steven G. Norfleet) and sister (Kalyne Coleman). His position allows him some privilege, such as entry into a white establishment, and there he meets a stranger to New Orleans, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid).

bite

Lestat seduces him and here we get a bigger change in the story than the ethnicity of a protagonist or the timeframe. Anne Rice’s vampires were, whilst erotically charged both as beings and in her prose, asexual. The books had a homoerotic undercurrent, whereas the vampires in this are fully sexual beings and Louis and Lestat become lovers. This adds layers of othering to the vampires; gay (or bi in Lestat's case) and in a mixed-race relationship. Louis’ family life, and the impact thereon, is also new. In the novel he lost his brother, in the feature his wife, but the family dynamics here are wider (though ultimately fleeting as they turn their back on him, which adds to his reliance on Lestat).

Bailey Bass as Claudia

As in the books Louis does try to subsist on animal blood and they do create a daughter, Claudia (Bailey Bass). But where the Claudia of the book was five and older than that in the film (Kirsten Dunst, who played her, was 12 when the film was released) this Claudia (rescued from a fire, rather than plague) was fourteen and has more agency than in previous vehicles, including a want to have a boyfriend rather than the more amorphous feelings of the older women trapped in a child's body. We actually get one episode from her point of view as Molloy reads the diaries she kept. Again this is a departure from the book, which is entirely from Louis’ viewpoint.

a dysfunctional family

I haven’t mentioned much about Lestat. Drawn in a book consistent way in many respects (certainly from Louis' point of view and not later books from his own), he is shown to be a manipulator and domestic abuser (mostly psychologically but also physically whilst his anger flares). He is drawn as narcissistic, though one moment of him killing a sub-optimum opera singer for crimes against music struck as lifting as much from Hannibal Lector as Anne Rice. The story goes as far as Claudia and Louis turning on him through the (unusually numbered) 7 episodes. The series is sumptuous and the primaries are all excellent in their roles but special mention (as per the head of the review) to Jacob Anderson on whose shoulders the show is carried.

Claudia attacks

The lore sees vampires disintegrating in the sun (unless of great age), having great strength and speed, fire and decapitation will kill and the vampires can read minds (and speak telepathically) but not with those they create. There are moments where it looks like time has stopped around them, though that is likely a perception thing. Lestat is eventually shown to have the ability to fly, though he hides that from his progeny at first, just as he hides much about their kind. Claudia does meet another vampire, in a period away from the pair, but it does not go well. Ultimately this was a grand yarn that I enjoyed watching play out before me. Familiar and yet changed, with themes extended in some ways. I do think it captured the essence of Rice’s vampires. 7.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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Short Film: Soy Leyenda

This short by Mario Gómez Martín was shot in 1967 and released by Escuela Oficial de Cine, Spain’s official National Film School, and excitingly is a make of I am Legend. It has appeared on YouTube, with subtitles, and is reminiscent of the earlier the Last Man on Earth but that could be just in taking beats from the novel – and the ending of this does not have the Christ connotations of the earlier film.

Moisés Menéndez as Robert Neville

It begins with a description of a world fallen, of the nuclear war and then the biological warfare. It tells us that there appeared vampires, products of the war, and the only uninfected man, Robert Neville (Moisés Menéndez), whose weapons are “those that Bram Stoker had anticipated: garlic, the cross, mirrors, stakes and sunlight…” The bit of the narration that was really strange was, before the mention of vampires, the suggestion of giant Lobsters – fear not, they do not appear, but Neville also speaks of giant grasshoppers (in a flashback scene that resonates with the novel).

Ana Castor as Ruth

The film crams in much of the story. Neville living alone (within something more akin to a bunker), the vampires led by Cortman (José María Resel) goading him to come out through the night. Menéndez perhaps does not have the powerful inner monologue that Vincent Price brought to the role but has a harried, desperate air that suits the character. We do see some level of vampire hunt, we get flashbacks to the illness of Virginia (Elisa Ramírez) – though there could have been a better segue into the flashback scenes – and her illegal burial and return. We get the delay at her grave and the appearance of Ruth (Ana Castor).

preparing to stake

It is perhaps a little hurried, after all Martín manages to cram it all into just over 36-minutes, but it is worthwhile stuff. The film suits the black and white 35mm treatment, there is a bleakness to the world that fits the story and every shadow feels oppressive. There is little in the way of practical effects. Whilst we see a stake brought to a vampire, the film cuts away from the actual impalement. Sound is this film’s ally, be it the distant yelling of the vampires or the thud of hammer on wood.

The imdb page is here.

Night of Vampyrmania – review

Director: Richard J. Thomson

Release date: 1993

Contains spoilers

The oddly named Night of Vampyrmania was a straight to video French film that is a portmanteau film in which the segments and wraparound all deal with vampires. But what vampires… The worst of makeup effects, a Christmas theme and one of the best (conceptually) stakings on film (though, not great in how it was presented, only in concept).

The film starts with an eviscerated body – though the fuzzy vhs transfer left much to the imagination – lying beneath a monument and then we meet the priest…

son of Dracula

The priest segment is the wraparound – entitled the Last Son of Dracula, though we only get the title later. In this segment we see the priest leave a building, drive a car and then pull over to tell us of the battle between good and evil and Satan’s more terrible soldier, the vampire. He then directs us to watch the next film. In-between the two primary segments we see him hunt down the last son of Dracula, as the title suggests, and what makeup when he gets to him – rubbish plastic fangs and the worst bald cap you can imagine…

Santa

The first story is entitled Red Xmas and we see a woman, Agnes, window shopping in a Parisian night with a young lad (her brother), whilst carrying a present. We notice a creepy looking Santa watching them and following. The Santa is in an alley when he is followed, in turn, by two ne’er-do-wells. They confront him, pull a knife and try to rob him. He crushes the head of one with his bare hands and, as a third robber on a motor bike appears, grabs the second and bites him – causing the dying robber to warn the biker that Santa is a vampire. The biker chases him until tricked into riding into the Seine.

party people

Agnes and her brother gets to her friend’s house, where they are to spend Christmas Eve, and we see that Santa has caught up to them (no explanation as to how he found them), as they go in the brother sees him over the road. Myriam is having a rather tame Christmas party with friends (and no booze, though a bottle of rum does appear). The party is eventually invaded by loud ex-military neighbour Mr Schwarzkopf – complaining about the noise and then inserting himself into the party. Meanwhile Santa gets in through a skylight.

staked by Christmas tree

He kills a couple who had gone to a bedroom first and then descends into the house aiming to kill everyone. Daftness includes killing someone by throwing a table fork barely into their stomach and the vampire being killed – and it is this that is conceptually genius. The vampire is staked (though we do not see the penetration – after all they couldn’t even run to proper fangs) by Christmas tree… genius… The segment does have a twist I won’t spoil.

Jacques

The other primary segment is called Hell Taxi and it follows entirely annoying (and creepy) character Jacques as he tries to meet his new neighbour, Cindy. When we first meet him, he is spying on her by binocular. Meanwhile a music student gets a taxi and, on entry, chains appear round his arms and the driver, Drakul, takes him off to an abandoned building where he drugs him and goes at him with axe and hacksaw whilst collecting his blood.

Drakul with saw

Of course, Jacques sees the taxi (indeed he fails to be picked up by it) and Cindy is later kidnapped. He wants to rescue her but is also spurred into action by the appearance of Krulda, who shares Drakul’s face but escaped vampirism and can now materialise at will. Drakul is kidnapping people as vampires had been surviving on blood from hospitals but it was bad and making them ill and so he is farming victims to feed his people – why that needs axes and hacksaws is anyone’s guess…

fangs on show

So, there you go, the first story had little in the way of plot to it (the twist tying more into the priest’s spiel than the actual story) and the second had more, but it wasn’t very good. The acting was awful but not as bad as the effects. Mr Schwarzkopf struck me almost as a prototype for the character René in 2009 zombie flick La horde, though not anywhere as funny (or funny at all). This isn’t a great film and is almost (rightly) lost to the vagaries of time though it can be tracked down from specialist dvd-r sellers. 2 out of 10 (and the Christmas tree wins most of the score).

The imdb page is here.

The Last Slay Ride – review

Director: Jason Hawkins

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

A Christmas themed vampire movie – excellent, there just aren’t enough but, unfortunately, this one didn’t set my Christmas Spirit soaring. Whilst I liked the concept, I just felt the whole thing was lacklustre and I’m struggling to put my finger on why. It’s partly the pace, partly the scripting but despite some interesting individual characters I was not wowed.

It starts with Ivan (Lukas Verri-Singer) running down the street and then we realise he is chased by Santa – who is actually Marco (Steve Larkin, Mutant Vampires from the Planet Neptune) a loan shark who catches Ivan, roughs him up and demands his $10k (from a $5K loan). He threatens to shoot Ivan’s dog (he doesn’t have one) and, when it becomes apparent that he has no pets, his grandma. Ivan gets back to (what I assume is a) dorm room and meets Josh (Calvin Morie McCarthy, also Mutant Vampires from the Planet Neptune). Ivan borrowed the money so that he and Josh could make a film… we go back in time…

Jessica, Josh and Ivan

Having read Josh’s script Ivan is excited to make the slasher movie. They borrow the money and put posters up and, before auditioning, meet Jessica (Sanae Loutsis) - a young lady much into horror films and the trivia thereof, who offers to work (as a PA) for nothing. Much of the interaction between her and Josh is composed of trivia of invented movies (at one point they mention the film Vampire Holocaust but don’t think they referred to the actual one). We watch the auditions, which is meant to introduce us to our characters – the primary ones being Lauren (Chynna Rae Shurts) – who Josh fancies and does, in fact, get together with, Evan (Bransen Sands Koehler) and the caretaker Bob (Jason Reynolds) who happens to walk into the audition and is hired for his silent stoicism.

shooting the film

We then get the filming of the movie (or edited highlights thereof) and the screening at a festival. To be honest this was all a bit much, despite being meant to introduce the characters we’d be watching, it really didn’t add much meat to the characters’ bones and though the whole film is designed around comedy it was not hilariously funny – just mildly amusing. Anyway, at the after show party, in a hotel room, a couple appear – Nina (Jackie Maya) and Max Rampage (Bill Victor Arucan) and take Josh off (much to Lauren’s chagrin). It turns out Max (who repeats his name and the company detail over and over, unable to say much else, it seems) is a distributor. Josh drags Ivan in and they sign up to a distribution deal.

Steve Larkin as Marco

So, this take us up to the start of the film and, despite being a hit, they haven’t seen a penny. The rest of the cast and crew think they are dodging them to avoid paying them. Ivan comes up with the idea of going to Max’s mansion and robbing him – Josh tones it down to confronting him and Josh, Ivan, Lauren, Bob, Evan and Jessica aim to go there. However, Marco finds them and takes over, taking a gun into the situation – which might even be threatening, if the household were not all vampires celebrating Christmas Eve!

vampires

So as well as Nina and Max (who is deteriorating in his undeath), there is also the vampire leader – referred to as the Queen but credited as Victoria (Elissa Dowling, the Last Revenants, Dracula in a Women’s Prison, Portraits, Live Evil & Dracula’s Curse), vampire henchmen Torson (Sebastian Bjorn) and Arvid (Lowell Deo), as well as the ancient (and dotty) Grandma (Eileen Dietz, Monsterland & Creepshow 3). Now, as Marco has a tendency to threaten to shoot grandmothers, he does shoot grandma and all Hell breaks loose…

dunked in holy water

Or doesn’t. There is a (literal) dog whistle moment, where the vampires summon Goths from the city to surround the house and prevent escape (an interesting idea that doesn’t work as well as it should have) and the search for the interlopers in the mansion is slow and ponderous. For lore we get that holy water, staking and sunlight all kill (the first causing the vampire to melt to skeleton – for plot convenience – and the other methods having the vampire dust in an unconvincing sfx). Josh and Jessica kill Max in a bath of holy water, a tactic they take from a film plot – in truth they could have just used the Lost Boys as the source and the filmic reference would have worked better. Where does the holy water come from? Jessica is an ordained minister. They then take the fangs and Josh uses them to pretend he is a vampire whilst Jessica sneaks behind the vampire he distracts with a stake. One turned cast member has front fangs for no explored reason when all the vampires have side fangs.

Elissa Dowling as the vampire queen

But the chase is slow, the chase is ponderous and there isn’t much to write home about. The comedy banter doesn’t particularly work well despite some fine individual performances - Eileen Dietz is fab as the foulmouthed grandma, Elissa Dowling oozes class, Calvin Morie McCarthy is all sorts of personable and Steve Larkin really works as Marco and, yet, I still wasn’t wowed. Despite the performances the laughs weren’t as realised as they needed to be, by a long shot, and this was both comedic chops/timing round the cast members but more so the script. There needed to be less of a run-in section (though more characterisation) and more comedy/horror and gore in the last bit. It’s a shame because there is a good film under here waiting to get out. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: The Night Courier

This is a short around the 20 minutes mark that was directed by Mason McDonald and released in 2021. It is a neatly put together piece but also a piece where I picked up more from the IMDb description than the short actively communicated.

It starts with a woman (Emily Tynan McDaniel) entering an apartment. She puts her bag down and pops the bedroom light on. She puts some plastic down in the bedroom doorway and then turns the light out. She picks up a book, entitled Who Are You Really, and then vanishes off screen.

an open invitation

A man enters the apartment and heads straight to the phone. He seems to be talking to a voice mail. Putting the receiver down he notes that the book isn’t there, walks into the bedroom, realises there is plastic on the floor when she appears and hits him from behind. I thought the welcome mat, “Come on in! All are Welcome!” was a nice touch – playing with invitation. We see this as she drags his plastic wrapped body out.

bleeding

She drives him out into the country, listening to a language tape as she does, and then we see him tied, being bled into a jar. She takes the jar and spills a trail to a crate, the rest going onto the top of the crate but, in the background, we see the chair is empty. She realises that he is gone as the lid of the crate begins to be banged, from the inside. He runs to the nearby house, calling for help…

vampire

The escape will draw the householder (Paul Gregory Clark) in, some nearby cops and the thing (Maximilian Koger) in the crate. However, what the IMDb description outlined, that perhaps wasn’t fully communicated in the short was, “In a society where vampirism is known and somewhat common, a night courier is hired to feed those who have been turned and are unable to live amongst us. The effects of vampirism occur on a spectrum where some are able to pass as 'normal', while the effects make others so volatile that average life is impossible.”

Emily Tynan McDaniel as the Courier

It’s an interesting premise that deserves pulling into a larger piece, the fact that she has planned out who will be the victim is shown in a notebook of assigned victims she carries. She is a stoic antagonist and I do think it would be interesting to take that longer ride with her. But, for now, we have the short film…

The imdb page is here.

Monster Family 2 – review

Director: Holger Tappe

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

The film Happy Family, also known as Monster Family, has spawned this sequel four years later and brings the voice talent back to reprise their characters.

It is some time after the events of the first film but we start with a flight towards Dracula’s castle. Within there the Count (Jason Isaacs, Justice League: Gods and Monsters) is still frozen in manbat form. With the cry of “Wakey, wakey Dracula” from Mila Starr (Emily Carey), a new character, his tongue is touched by sunlight and the burning unfreezes him. We cut away and go to suburbia, where Max (Ethan Rouse) experiments with a magical stone he has 'borrowed' from Baba Yaga (Catherine Tate)

waking Drac

Cut back to Mila and there is a moment around a tooth cavity and capturing Dracula under a chandelier and then see her speaking, through hologram technology, to her parents – who send her to capture Baba Yaga. Meanwhile the family are meant to be going to aforementioned witch’s wedding to Renfield (Ewan Bailey, Vampyre Nation). After moments that show the stresses and strains the family are going through, they get to the church in time for Milla to arrive and kidnap the witch with a drone.

Emma as a vampire

There is some fight to save her, but ultimately she (and Renfield) are taken. Max, who is strangely drawn to Mila, realises that he would have been more successful if he were still a werewolf and tries to use Baba’s stone to re-curse himself; the family intervene, they are all cursed – with mom Emma (Emily Watson) becoming a vampire again, Dad Frank (Nick Frost) becoming Frankenstein’s Monster and sister Fay (Jessica Brown Findlay) becoming a mummy. As they are not happy as a family (again) the curse will remain until they achieve happiness.

Drac the autopilot

The chase is on as Mila looks to kidnap monsters for her parents – who are the megalomaniac type of genius that convinces themselves they do everything for the greater good. There is little in the way of vampire action. Dracula is restricted to a short sequence at front and end of the film, he also appears as a hologram autopilot for the Dracula Jet (the family happen to have), and Emma having a lack of self-control moment when she becomes hungry, staved when given a plasma pill. As for the film itself, it looks lovely – the animation, like the first film, is top notch. The story is perhaps a little less preachy but it relies on set sequences and the musical number is pretty darn poor (though story-centric). There is a gag where Emma tries to hypnotise Mila but it backfires and she causes her self to dance like MC Hammer and it made me think that the scriptwriters were out of touch – the gag works for a man my age but why would a teenage girl now reach back so far into pop culture for a dance, surely there are modern artists she would have chosen?

Mila and manbat Drac

This was inoffensive, and if your kids liked the first one then they should like this. However the classic monsters (in the family) were under-used and the Yeti (Oliver Kalkofe), Nessie and King Konga (Tilo Schmitz) did not make for interesting characterisations. We saw too little of the bad guys for them to develop anything more than cookie cutter villainship. Mila was more rounded and the film really is about her and Max. 4.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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Honourable Mention: The Freakshow Apocalypse: The Unholy Sideshow

From director Matthew Broomfield this 2007 film is described as the first two parts in a four-part miniseries. I can’t spot the denouement film and so hope it was never done because this is really quite a bad film. The basic story is that there is a secret society, the Order of Mystery, who used necromancy to extend their lives and this practice opened doorways that they had to close every few centuries with ritual sacrifice.

There is also a circus troupe (the extreme circus stuff, all played, from what I can tell, by actual performers) called the Unholy Sideshow who want to get into the Order but this is being blocked because their magic using member is in a feud with an Order member.

biting a wrist

They do a show, kidnap most of the audience and this then leads us into torture porn territory. One of the audience members not kidnapped is down to be the sacrifice. The film’s intertitles suggest that they absorb the victims’ life force – which could be said to be energy vampirism. However the reason for the mention is a member of the Order of Mystery who has fangs, bites a wrist, sucks the blood and then spits it into a goblet for the order to drink from. He is our vampire, but his appearance is fleeting (including one when the zombie apocalypse has started and we see him bite another wrist). Avoid.

The imdb page is here.

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Short Film: Vampire Bureau of Investigations – VBI

This is a short film that was directed by Ron Z. Miller, which comes in just under 8 minutes and was released in 2013 (according to the Amazon On Demand page, there was no IMDb page I could find to corroborate the date).

Set in a world where, one assumes, vampires are a known phenomenon and the police have a division to investigate them, this starts with an Internal Affairs officer Sheppard (Toni Miles) relaying what she knows about the antics of a VBI officer Hawkins (Ron Z. Miller). Hawkins recently had a rooftop tussle with a vampire that ended with the vampire going over the edge of the roof. Hawkins has drawn it as an accident, but witnesses have suggested he actively tossed the vampire from the building.

Lori Marie Helfrich as Luck

He and his partner, Nelson (Zach Ball) have captured a vampire, Brenda Luck (Lori Marie Helfrich), and she is chained in their car. Before they can get her in to the building in which they intend to interrogate her Sheppard shows up. She allows the interrogation to take place but intervenes when Hawkins seems too forceful. But perhaps there is more to Luck than meets the eye…

Ron Z. Miller as Hawkins

And that’s about it, being so brief this leaves a lot to shorthand but it does feel more like a test reel for a larger, more involved piece. It didn’t fill me with wow, unfortunately, and yet I’d give a longer exploration of the world a go. The film is definitely hamstrung by budget, or lack thereof, and the filming is functional at best. As I mentioned at the start of the article, I couldn’t find an IMDb page.

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Slash/Back – review

Director: Nyla Innuksuk

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Adding in elements that explore the coming of age of Inuit girls (this film tells its story through the eyes of a group of girls), and also touching on questions of alienation from tradition as these indigenous youth push away from their collective past but discover they need that tradition to survive, Slash/Back is a film that skirts around horror (it is perhaps a little more action, though has some tentacled moments and some interesting body horror) as it uses that youth lens but has alien vampires.

Tasiana Shirley as Maika

It begins on a ship as a father teaches his daughter Maika (played young by Niviaq Mike and older by Tasiana Shirley) to hunt. This is followed by a man out in the wild, in modern day, who sees something odd in the snow and is killed, with an implication that it has his face off. Elsewhere the older Maika seems embarrassed by her father and mother and both estranged from and ashamed of her indigenous heritage. We see this in things as simple as responding to her parents in English, to her desire to attack traditional art and food and dislike of her home, the town of Pangnirtung, Nunavut.

spotting the bear

After a moment where her little sister, Aju (Frankie Vincent-Wolfe), has some money conned from her by Maika’s friend Uki (the tough-as-nails Nalajoss Ellsworth) and she gets it back, she takes her father’s rifle and she, Uki, Jesse (Alexis Wolfe) and Lenna (Chelsea Prusky) take a boat out to the Land and leave Aju behind. After Uki has bragged about being a great shot, and Maika has refused to show off her shooting skills, they spot a bear acting odd, it walks strangely. About this time Aju finds them – having cycled – when Uki shoots the bear.

the bear attacks

It falls and then suddenly it is up and runs at Aju, who is frozen. It is on her before Maika can load and shoot but, once Maika can get the shot off, it falls and the young girl is shaken but otherwise unharmed. However, she is covered in a black oily substance, rather than blood. They return to the town and we see a tentacle or snake like thing emerge from the bear’s eye-socket and slink away. Back home the girls talk to their contemporaries about what happened – Uki suggests it was Ijirak – shapeshifting creatures that steal children in Inuit folklore but Maika reacts vehemently against the thought that it might be anything like that.

the parasite infested fox 

Having been invited to a party when the adults are out (it is solstice and the adults have a dance organised) the girls go out – with the grounded Lenna sneaking out and Uki not to be found as she has gone back to the Land because of a dare by Maika. There Uki sees a group of animals acting odd around a shape – which she realises is draining blood when it attaches a tentacle to prey and later suggests is some sort of ship (the leaps to understand what is occurring in this are taken on faith) – and is attacked by an artic fox. The fox has tentacles that emerge from its eyes and mouth and Uki manages to kill it by slitting its throat – getting the black blood on herself in the process.

wearing the cop like a disguise

Back at the village she crashes the party to tell everyone about the hunter aliens but we have seen a polar bear attack a cop and he has been taken over and enters the party hunting Uki. So, the aliens do drink blood, draining their prey dry, but then may wear the kill like an ill-fitting skin and can smell their own blood. They are hunting Uki and Aju until the primary girls turn the tables and, embracing their own traditions, hunt them back. As they work out what is happening they also work out that the blood fuels the aliens so their flesh puppets are quicker and stronger but falter when they run out of fuel, as it were. We do get a face ripped away and see inside one of the possessed (possessed is perhaps a bit strong given that it is more wearing skin).

the girls hunt the aliens

This is good fun, it is simplistic in how it explains the lore – as I said above the girls just seem to work out things in great narrative explaining leaps, but there are fab moments, like Maika and Jesse suddenly ignoring they are looking for killer alien parasites wearing a person as a disguise and argue over a boy. The tension between tradition and modernity is explored well – a line about folklore being old people stories made up because there was no internet was inciteful in its summing up of that tension. The acting is sometimes faltering, but works as a group of kids becoming adults and exposes their awkwardness.

face (mask) removed

The effects are fun – the fact that the human/aliens look like masks work, because they are actually skin masks and I enjoyed their inhuman, jerky movements. The whole effect side has a B quality to it that works with the sci-fi element. There is a whole bit of this that feels like a homage to the Thing – apt as we get Jesse explaining the plot of the film. There is an element of social justice with Maika wearing a jacket that says “No justice on stolen land”, a Caucasian cop hassling the kids and the film title, at the end, morphing to Land Back – so of course the idea of aliens coming, killing the animals and draining the blood of the animals and people fits into that narrative.

feeding

On the other hand, as fun as this is it does struggle to carry a horror element as well as it might, as well as moving the narrative explanations with leaps that felt too much of a character’s logical leap and so I think 6 out of 10 is fair. The imdb page is here.

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On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK