Friday, February 10, 2023

Short Film: Vampire Story


Directed by Gary J Byrnes, this 2013 short comes in at 8:30 and is a very stylised piece that chooses imagery over direct narrative – though the film does have a story to tell across its short length.

Set in modern-day Dublin, the film follows a writer (Philip English) of vampire stories, who for 100-years has written but been rejected. It becomes apparent that this was not always the case and he was once a successful writer who gave the world… Dracula. We also see him discovered and hunted, whilst getting a new identity through the bank (the implication, of course, that the bank fronts vampires is one that fits the idea of the vampire as capitalism).

bite

The film leans heavily into the imagery, as I mentioned, but also the soundtrack that dominates the frames. True, Philip English looks nothing like Bram Stoker but I think we can forgive the filmmakers that conceit as this is definitely a love letter, placing Stoker at the heart of the genre his novel dominates.

At the time of writing, I could not find an IMDb page.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

A thoughtful evocative story which edges around Bram Stoker. The music adds to the drama, and it conveys the hopelessness of getting recognized in modern times. I didn't really get the capitalism aspect, but there were flashes of blood but really left to the imagination. It worked as a short film to whet the appetite for more.

Taliesin_ttlg said...

cheers for the comment, always appreciated - to me it felt like a capitalism simile was being brought in by using the bank and that ties into the gist of what Voltaire had to say about vampires, and the use of them as a metaphor in Marx