Vampire Genesis – review

Director: Michael Lee Buie

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Crossing vampires with aliens is not unheard of and it can work but sometimes one wonders what the point was. Sometimes the extra-terrestrial origin of the vampire (or in this case both vampires and demons) makes not one iota of difference and the film could just as easily have had them hailing from other dimensions and of supernatural origin.

It starts with a young woman, Karen (Neriah Chadwick), dreaming and waking. She calls local priest Father Domenici (Ernest Jam) who tells her to come over. She gets dressed (in some short shorts) and is nervous as she crosses the graveyard, clearly sensing someone around. She goes in the church, uses the bathroom to put makeup on and then tells Domenici about her dreams.

Maalik revealed

Declaring that she has revealed herself as the first seer, he suddenly transforms and reveals he is actually Diablo Maalik, eater of souls. He is terrorising her when a pair come in, one a vampire queen who gave Maalik a daywalking stone and her servant Ahriman (Renaissance Jones). Maalik loses his head, for undermining her authority, and she leaves Ahriman to deal with the seer – but he does not kill her.

Nadia Covington as the Empress

Twenty years later and on a mothership we meet vampire Empress Amunet (Nadia Covington). She is disturbed by the Captain Abu’Al (Eric Hamilton) who says that a slave, Teh'a (Katrina Jeen), has escaped to Earth. The slaves are generically manipulated vampire/humans from what I can tell. A hunter is despatched after her and we later discover that she is attuned to Gaia, a physical manifestation of Earth I assume, who defeated the vampires when they last invaded. Except for the vampires who remained on Earth, of course, and the demons.

the slave's arrival

The film proper follows hard-ass Detective Jessica Cole (Stephanie Fausto) who is put onto the alien landing case as a punishment assignment. Cole has powers that she has not yet allowed to manifest. The vampires are after the (now disguised as human) slave and Cole is embroiled in it and the plot, as in much with the film, is over ambitious for the budget and the filmmakers’ skill level.

eyes

The cgi used within the film is not great – cgi blood spatter always tends to look bad but the spaceship scenes look pretty average also. The alien aspect, as mentioned, needn’t have been there and the acting was a mixed bag – though to be far Fausto gave her all as Cole. This is one with plenty of ambition, as suggested, but it just didn’t do it for me. 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK