Director: Marcos Lomelí
Release date: 2023
Contains spoilers
A new Mexican film that manages to belay the low budget to some degree but, at the same time, lacked something at its core. It wasn’t around the photography, which whilst not perfect hid behind the conceit of (almost) found footage – in that there is plenty of footage that is being shot by the primary character. It was more in story and lore, as we’ll see.
The film starts in POV as a camera is carried around an apartment. Eventually a door is opened and we see a woman draped in red (Maggie Perfecto) lying on the bed. The camera is carried round the room and when we see her face she awakens and asks what the f*ck the cameraman is doing.
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| filming her slumber |
She doesn’t seem overly concerned, offering the cameraman – who will be revealed to be Efrén (Diego Mackeprag) – the opportunity to lie with her. She notes his silence, and the fact he didn’t shut up the night before, and suggests that he might be having erectile problems and mentions pills to help with that. Taking his shirt, she goes to the bathroom and starts the shower. We do see her showering (from a modest angle) and the camera work does jump from what Efrén is shooting to a more traditional 3rd person camera view.
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| cleaver |
We see a circuit of the apartment once more, again looking through his camera. He plays with a couple of knives in a block but he leaves them and opens a draw, extracting a cleaver. He goes to the bathroom and it seems as though we are going to get a pov version of the famous psycho scene but the camera tumbles as she punches him and we see him for the first time, lying on the floor. She punches him more and suggests the world would be better without him but then decides to leave and call the cops. A kick to her leg, a grab of the cleaver and she is dead.
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| Diego Mackeprag as Efrén |
Now, first off – the cleaver. The effect of it buried in her chest looks brilliant – props to the sfx guys. What we could have had, hereon in, was a black comedy with Efrén portrayed as inept in his hunts but, although there is a degree of that, it was never really played on in that sense. The scene moves to Efrén talking to camera and admitting he is a psychopath – born that way (a debatable point, as I’ll touch on) and he has decided not to hide anymore, relieving a weight he has carried… except, he does hide who he is, the films are for him and when he thinks he might get caught he destroys keepsakes and hides his predilections. He makes a point of saying he never bed-wet, tortured animals or was a pyromaniac.
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| Efrén and Tika |
His filming is interrupted by a constant door ringing that eventually becomes a knock. It is a young woman called Tika (Karen Mendoza). He has invited her over to discuss a YouTube collaboration. He has 400 followers on his channel, she 4000, and he has suggested they team up and he will pay her 2000 pesos (roughly £90) per video – starting with two per week with her acting as hostess for his cooking show. She ignores the cooking part but goes on about doing dance routines until she gets a call and has to leave. It appears that he follows her and we get (captured on his camera, with no real clue as to how he was not spotted) her life drama, meeting her girlfriend but being called by her abusive ex-boyfriend who is also her child’s dad. The thing is, all this background seemed subsequently wasted.
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| stalking prostitutes |
Later, he pulls his car up by her on the street, honking his horn until she looks and explaining who he is (it makes it feel like some time has passed) and offering a lift. Her bus arrives and she gets that instead. We then see him pick up a prostitute (Lupita Pérez). He has hidden his camera in the back of the car, and his cleaver, and drives off for a BJ. When she is down on him and he grabs the cleaver, he says “no mom” but this is not played on anymore. Presumably his psychopathic hatred of women then has a source (and the Psycho reference earlier is more apropos). A figure (Iyari Martínez) stands before the car the flash on her phone going off as he butchers the prostitute.
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| filming the murder |
Back at home, whilst washing blood from his face, the woman with a camera enters (through a window) and then opens and closes the apartment door (to make him think she came in a conventional route?) She films him, reversing the power he has and confronting him. She has film of his crime and eventually he throttles her, he goes over to his camera in the room and we see her sit up behind him and, after confronting him, is out the window. She is, of course, the vampire of the title. Following this he meets a woman, Ramona (Jessica Martínez Otero), searching for her missing daughter – he denies knowing her, though Ramona believes she came to him for a job interview. He kills Tika after an altercation (we see him take her body into a dismembering room ala Dexter), starts being haunted by the ghosts of his victims (but only those he killed that we saw) and is eventually grabbed and bitten by the vampire.
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| attacking the vampire |
And this is where the story goes wrong. For a start off we don’t know why the vampire takes an interest in him or why she cares about his crimes (though she does make mention of things that indicate she finds his murders misogynistic). She has teamed up with Ramona to get a confession out of him (though a reason why either character would work with the other seems lacking) but we discover later that, as her slave (the vampires have a compulsion to obey the one who turned them), he must obey her so the convoluted path to confession (which doesn’t work anyway) seems odd. It would have made more narrative sense if Ramona had been Tika’s mother and the film was nonlinear or edited so she was only introduced after Tika’s death, but it is clear she wasn’t, and so we have a narrative gap of a kill being unseen that had an imperative plot impact. It just felt there was characterisation and plot aspects missing – plus it also seemed that he was the most lackadaisical serial killer when it came to evidence and therefore his continued activity/freedom didn’t actually read well. Apparently, there were packing boxes full of body parts and yet there was no stench when people came to the apartment.
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| fangs |
Likewise, the lore feels patchy. Though we don’t know her reason for helping Ramona, turning him would seem to be more to make him a slave for her after his confession. In truth it is revealed that it was half-turning him, though it is not explained what would make him a full vampire (and whether that would free him from his slavery). Garlic and sunlight work (though the sunlight was indicated by actor reaction and not prominent sfx) but he can’t leave the apartment because something is on the floor (later ‘salt road’ is mentioned, which hasn’t translated awfully well but salt and vampires is quite an unusual mix). It is almost like an invisible barrier that hurts to touch (and in the subtitles this is described as having a ‘force field’ noise) but when the salt is removed, he still can’t leave – protection plants, he’s told, but we are never told what sort of plants. We do know vampires can be filmed.
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| the vampire confronts Efrén |
It’s a shame. Diego Mackeprag acts in an overtly friendly sincere way that fit the character and reminded me of Sting’s performance in Brimstone and Treacle. Whilst this worked, he struggled, I felt, to emote the darker shades of the character. An exploration of his motivations (especially around his mother, as it seemed a cheap plot contrivance to have him say he was simply born that way and then add the mother line in as a throwaway) and also the impetus for the vampire’s actions was desperately needed. The film was generally lacking in locations (mostly using the apartment bar some minimal external scenes). As mentioned, the cleaver wound sfx was good but we generally saw little in the way of gore (at one point someone with a stabbed neck manages not to bleed out over the floor). This could have been a lot better with expanded sfx, more exploration of the titular characters and better plotting generally. I am going to stick with the original thought of 4 out of 10 though, as I have written the review, I feel that is too generous.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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