Beneath Us All – review

Director: Harley Wallen

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

It so nearly hit for me, but this film unfortunately fluffed in a couple of places and the interesting set up of certain storylines could have been exploited better. Nevertheless, it was great to see another vampire film come out of nowhere and do battle with its budget.

The film starts in the past and with the Norse and I was really quite taken with the photography of the establishing landscape. A woman (Alyssa Caswell) is with her child (Charlotte Teall). The child wanders off, she becomes worried and, shouting out, searches. She finds the girl dead, with blood at her neck.

finding the Norse girl

We see Frey (Yan Birch) as he is hunted down by Norsemen. What I hate to mention, but cannot not, was the costuming that looked too much like modern cosplay and not authentic (especially Frey’s silvered tunic and fabric-based chainmail!) It is notable that, whilst it is a forest, all this takes place during the day. Frey is shot by an arrow and then interred, still alive, in a coffin, which is sailed to Vinland (America), where the Norsemen bury their problem.

injured birds

In the present day we meet Julie (Angelina Danielle Cama) who finds an injured bird and takes it home, to nurse it to health. She shows it to her foster brother Stephen (Malachi Myles) but they have to keep it secret. Together with two younger girls they are all in the foster care of Todd (Sean Whalen) and Janelle (Maria Olsen, Painkillers & Folklore). The film makes it clear that they foster for the money it brings in.

in pain

Todd has a gambling problem (and is also probably involved in some ropey activity, it is implied) and, when he is woken by chirping, he tracks down the bird and then kills it in front of Julie with a spade, stating he doesn’t care for the bird, rather he cares for the household and the disease it might being in. Julie runs off and here we get an issue. She suddenly has a Viking medallion on a chain and it felt like it came from nowhere – I suspect the finding scene was edited down hence feeling abrupt. There is a mystical moment and a sound that hurts her ears and causes her to barrel through the countryside in pain.

Kaiti Wallen as Rebecca

We also meet Rebecca (Kaiti Wallen), a social worker who is close to burnout (so her boss keeps saying) and has her patch relocated to “the boonies” and visits the family. Julie, apparently, went missing for a while. Julie is also mere months from attaining majority. After the  social worker's visit, Julie goes out and finds the coffin, opens it and Frey sits up. Julie takes him to a barn and brings him food but it is clear that he needs something else to feed upon. Strangely, though Todd is drawn as abusive, this act (foreshadowed by the bird incident) actually paints Todd into the sensible light – protecting the household, whilst Julie endangers it.

Yan Birch as Frey

The story progresses pretty much as you’d think and Frey (who quickly is speaking English – I really wish they had put in a scene that indicated blood memories to explain that one) eventually feeds from Julie and feeds her his blood, causing her to start to turn. There is clear dialogue that says he doesn’t like light/sunlight and this sits poorly with the opening. He is, however, starting a metamorphosis into a bat creature and so, perhaps, it had to do more with that – the film doesn’t say. Julie starts sprouting a maw of long teeth and they reminded me of those in leptirica. Kill a vampire and it’ll destroy those it made.

foster parents

I thought the entire Rebecca story was a missed opportunity. We have her offered a job by a cop (Harley Wallen) but the entire thing about her imminent burnout was window dressing that nothing was really done with – it just placed her in the location. I think the interaction between vampire and social worker was handled as a story better in boy #5 - and her motivations were lax in that film, in this we had potential with a stronger performance from Kaiti Wallen but a failure to exploit the narrative. The ever-reliable Maria Olsen, along with Sean Whalen, gave strong performances that bolstered the film.

vampire teeth

The biggest issue, for me, was the horror aspect. There simply wasn’t enough done with that. Much was hidden – either off-screen, with the feeding from two girls being a prime example where they go off and then they find the bodies but we don’t see the attack, or just hidden in poor lighting – and the entire finale suffers for that. Talking of the finale, I watched the film and the next day the end sequence had just gone from memory. I rewatched it and was equally underwhelmed. It doesn’t give the tense finish the film needed. All that is a shame – and I cannot take away from Olsen and Whalen’s performances – but I can’t give this more than 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK