Bury the Bride – review

Director: Spider One

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

The predominant spoiler to this review is that this is a vampire film. The blurb didn’t lead me to that conclusion, it was a Tubi original that I decided to watch as they have had some good ones lately (I’ll draw your attention to Slay and You Shouldn’t Have Let Me In in particular). At first I thought it was shaping up to be a desert based kind of Deliverance-esque meets revenge flick and then… bam… vampires. Sorry for the spoiler therefore. I will say that I then messaged Simon Bacon and we had a little to-and-fro where we celebrated the fact that vampires seem low-key vogue at the moment (not that they ever truly go out of style) and certainly so with Tubi.

waiting for Carmen

So, after a scene of a woman stabbing someone furiously, this starts a couple of days before with a group of women, two sat and one behind the barrier squatting. One of the seated women is June (Scout Taylor-Compton, Pearblossom & Captive) and it is her Hen Party that they are going to. Also sat is nerdy Liz (Rachel Brunner) and squatting trying to pee is party girl Carmen (Lyndsi LaRose). There is a call from the car to hurry up from June’s sister Sadie (Krsy Fox, Underworld: Evolution), who is in the car with her friend Betty (Katie Ryan). With the first set of women, we get the idea that Carmen is not impressed with the location (they could have gone to Palm Springs rather than the middle of nowhere) and June's fiancé, David (Dylan Rourke) doesn’t have pictures taken and hates social media. In the car it is evident that Sadie has doubts about her sister’s choice.

arrival

Any doubts are amplified when they get to the house, though June loves its rustic nature. Liz comments that she has seen *this movie* and it ends badly, Once inside there is a smell to the place that is immediately commented on and when they go and find the hot tub, it is filthy with a layer of scummy water and a goat’s decapitated head floating in it. So, red flags aplenty. Nevertheless, for June, they do their best despite obvious in group tensions. June and Sadie have sororal issues, the latter is a divorcee who has a good job and is materialistic. Forcing Liz to drink causes her filters to drop and she is openly critical about June’s choices. Despite giving us some obvious stereotypes – especially Carmen and Liz – the film uses this to build up some layer of characterisation.

Krsy Fox as Sadie

The next night Sadie reveals a bottle of very expensive wine and there is commentary about her letting them know just how expensive. There is a knock at the door and the women, bar June, go to investigate but no-one is there. Screams from June get them running back but they are screams of joy. David is there and then his “boys” come in; Mike (Adam Marcinowski), Bobby (Cameron Cowperthwaite) and the mute Puppy (Dylan Rourke). The group are clearly mismatched, with the men coming across as red neck country folk with nationalistic and religious tendencies. Instances like swigging down the wine from the bottle cement the social divide. June seems delighted, however.

attacked

David mentions securing the perimeter; big cats come down from the mountains. Liz is horrified at the idea of killing them, Carmen asks to go with them and, despite some protest from the women, they agree. The men, with Carmen, drive off and get to a trailer where they stop. David digs up a bottle of bourbon and mentions a tradition of burying the whisky and digging it up to bless the marriage, making it eternal. They drink it with a chant that includes “bury the bride”. Carmen has been flirting with Mike and he asks if she has a phone – they get Bobby to take their picture but when she looks, he is not in it. He bears fangs and attacks (and I went, yay, vampires!)

Dylan Rourke as David

So the four men are vampires and, as things go on, it transpires that they have an annual tradition of taking turns to attract a woman, normally desperate to marry, and invite them to use the cottage for a hen night or the ceremony – with friends and family – and then hunt them. The one’s they like they turn to play with longer. Turning in this is interesting; David suggests that he could kill Betty by blowing her brains out or eating her but with the second she might come back – but it isn’t the feeding on her that will turn her. Rather, it is burying the person in the ground overnight that turns them and it is something specific about that landscape. The reason blowing her brains out won’t turn her (presumably even if buried) is because it seems that a head shot will kill a vampire in this.

sunlight exposure

The other lore we get is that religious symbols don’t do anything (though the cross used is only two pieces of wood Cushing’d together rather than a blessed item) but David has quoted scripture earlier and so we can assume that religious trappings do nothing. At first it seems like sunlight isn’t an issue but we later discover that it is, however it is a slow way to kill the vampire, over the day, and not an instantaneous burning up. That is about it for lore and it seems that they aren’t particularly any faster or stronger than when alive, and the first couple of attacks are successful more through surprise than anything.

David and June

And it is another solid Tubi original. The film takes its time to build the women’s characters and for the men, more so, those of David and Mike. There is a nice tension from when they arrive as you know it is going to go horribly wrong – just not how it will go wrong. The limited location works in its favour, with the remoteness of the cottage being the factor that holds the women. The film doesn’t overtly do anything new, though the land being the turning factor is unusual, but powers through familiar territory (as in the “deadly yokels” aspect) really soundly. This one crept up on me, as I mentioned, but I was enjoying it before they were revealed as vampires and that was just icing on the cake. As I said, that is a spoiler – but me reviewing it spoiled that aspect anyway. A solid 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.