Director: Tim Russ
Release date: 2021
Contains spoilers
There is an elephant in the room of this Tim Russ (probably best known for playing Tuvok in Star Trek Voyager) directed film. I realise that it is based on a novel that was published by the production company of the film, but when you call the book/film Slayer, when the vampire slayer is a woman, when she is referred to as the Chosen One and when the Slayer abilities come with the passing of the previous Slayer (albeit down familial lines), then you should really expect people to wonder if this is just a riff on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In truth this does take its premise from that, there is no escaping it, but does try to build something different within its run time.
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| attacking Marna |
Marna (Marina Hutchinson) is in a ballet school training a young girl when she gets a text from Cody. She, in a fairly good natured text, accuses him of ghosting her but his responses, and the flowers that are then delivered, convince her to meet with him at 9 PM, in 'their place' – which turns out to be a lighthouse some distance away. She texts to see where he is and gets no response but sees a figure behind the car. She calls out but then panics, gets into the car, fumbles her keys and gets yanked from the car (damn those convertibles for the lack of driver protection) and fed upon.
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| a vampire |
Now before we go on; Marna turns out to be one of several people to have gone missing and a news report suggests that hacked social media has been used to lure many of them. That seems a tad convoluted to lure a victim, as does sending flowers. There is no indication in the narrative that the social media belonged to a previous missing person (which would have been a major point of investigation one would have thought). I would have liked for the film to explain why the vampires were using that method of lure.
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| vampire kids |
Anyway, we see Raven (Madison Russ) and Sam (Aaron Mann) on a couch and she is talking about a film. She then realises that she hasn’t seen Sam for some time and he suggests that he is not there in a traditional sense, mentions astral projection and then vanishes. Elsewhere Mike (Craig DeLuz) gets a message and calls Jordan (J Parker Grove). A viewer of their paranormal investigation livestream show has suggested a location. They go to it, enter the abandoned looking (bar the light upstairs) and are attacked by vampire kids. Jordan (who has the stream) manages to get out and into a barn, releasing a girl in a cage. Papa (Richard Tyson, Blood Immortal) enters and Jordan suggests they are being watched by millions, to which Papa is delighted. The rescued girl vamps out and attacks Jordan.
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| Madison Russ as Raven |
Raven gets a call from her cousin Lisa (Shannon McCabe), who apologises… she had been trying to find a contact. Raven’s mom (Wendy Bosley) died a month before. Later, at a martial arts class, Raven speaks to her best friend Kelley (Tabitha Ward) about this – she had not seen her mom for a long time. The conversation continues in a café and Kelley, a counsellor and lightworker (in her spare time) warns Raven that change is coming into her life. Monsters, asks Raven (which is a leap). Among other things… like vampires… goes the even more on the nose reply, and here we have a big problem with the story.
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| touching the veil |
Kelley is part of the Circle, a group of people who protected the Veil (between the living and the dead), of which the Slayer is a primary member. Sam is a member of this also, trained as a kid by Raven’s mom (as Raven was, though she has forgotten), he turns out to be a comrade of Kelley, and brings Raven (out of the blue) her mother’s bequest to her. Logically, at some point, you think Raven is going to say… wait, Kelley, you were grooming me and y’all knew where I was but couldn’t be arsed telling me that my mom had died until a month later… The trust would clearly be low, but none of that actually happens.
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| Richard Tyson as Papa |
The other members of the circle, who we meet, are two-dimensional cannon fodder bar the one who clearly doesn’t like Raven, but the reasons for this dislike are not voiced and Raven doesn’t ask (we get a shorthand excuse for her behaviour at the end but there was no build to this exposition, bar her projected dislike). This is the biggest problem with the film, the story makes leaps, avoids obvious character reactions (Raven is down with all this way too quickly) and this harms the storytelling. For instance, there is a kidnapped, unturned, girl who is ‘the key’ but we don’t know why, just that she is. Papa’s goal is to rend the Veil and take over the world.
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| dusting a vamp |
The vampires are drawn quite well, with an almost feral nastiness to some of them, glowing eyes and zero humanity getting in the way. They are destroyed by sunlight or a stake to the heart and dust on death (the effect isn’t brill but you can live with it). The vampire hunters have guns that are never explained and seem to fire a powder containing projectile (I assume garlic). I have to mention that the DVD transfer isn’t brilliant and can lead to some visual distortion (such as pixilation, most noticeable on an overhead tracking shot of Marna’s car at the head of the film.
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| Raven and Sam |
Despite the narrative issues, and the derivative nature of the premise, this was still entertaining. Issues with doubled up dialogue (within a single scene) aside and the uneven nature of the acting, we vacillate from the effective (especially Richard Tyson) to the distinctly average, there was a nub of an effective film here that needed better pacing, certainly, and more time dedicated to characters and plot points. 4 out of 10 seems fair.
The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon US
On DVD @ Amazon UK
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