Directors: Jasper de Bruin, Xavier Hamel & Dustin Curtis Murphy (segments)
Release date: 2023
Contains spoilers
Creating an anthology film by tying shorts together is very much a thing at the moment and they often vary in quality. The shorts in this case, one of which I have previously looked at in its own right, vary on story quality but are all good quality shoots.
The film has six shorts in all and three of them are vampire shorts. I do have to give a shout out to the first short, however, which is a witch orientated one, simply because it was so well done. Shot by Sofìa Carrillo in Black and White it is called the Wandering Witch. A lovely sequence is included where two witches in the film both transform into cats as they prowl and fight in that form and as humans but with fangs.
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| The Hunger |
The first vampire segment is the Jasper de Bruin directed short Nightingale, which still holds its own as a short and, indeed, I think was ultimately the most satisfying of the three vampire shorts. The next was called Forever & Ever and was directed by Xavier Hamel. It is narrated by Kate, a girl at high school who becomes invisible to all until Vicky sees her. When we first see them together they are led under a The Hunger poster. Vicky takes Kate to the prom and there is homophobic murmuring and Vicky dances with one of the mean girls but, when she lures Kate into a room, she reveals her vampire nature, turns her and a massacre ensues. The short was very short, quite classy in its cinematography though it showed very little and the story was absolutely basic.
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| survivor |
The final vampire segment was Dustin Curtis Murphy’s The Last Confession in which a priest visits Franz, a dying man who had been a guard at a concentration camp. He is unrepentant but tells the priest that he did one selfless act, taking a girl who somehow survived the gas chamber and hiding her from the Nazis. Of course there is a reason she survived the industrialised slaughter and she has been in touch with him recently… This one worked well, mentioning her nature is a spoiler (but when the vampirism is the twist its hard not to spoil) and the thought that a selfless act amongst all the evil was an evil act in and of itself was interesting.
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| bitten |
The collection is worthwhile and it’s nice to see vampires taking centre stage. In fact, the short Family History by Mark J. Parker could also be argued to have a vampiric aspect also but with three of the films being traditionally vampire stories I haven’t covered that one off. The scores for these are for the vampire segments and Nightingale strengthens this to a solid 6 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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