Director: Chris Schwab
Release date: 2024
Contains spoilers
Originally billed as Fangs Out 2, I can see little connectivity between this and Fangs Out bar them being about vampires, and Randy Oppenheimer (Blood Moon Rising, Arise of the Snake Woman & Ammityville Vampire) and Marlene Mc'Cohen (The Boneyard Collection. Vampire Boys & Vampire Boys 2: The New Brood) being in both films, but playing different roles. As the title suggests this is a vampire apocalypse film and yet, despite this, it somehow feels much smaller than the previous film.
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| city during the vampire war |
We get background to begin with of the last days before the war. The vampires took the children and then blackened the sun before waging war on humanity. It suggests three sisters as the vampire originators and that war has been raging for six years. We then move to Thompson island, an inhospitable island with a research lab. One of the residents is outside, wearing protective gear, and finds a man, Ray (Brenton Jones), washed up on the shore. He is taken into the facility but then bound.
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| the facility team |
The facility has an all female staff. Head researcher is Davis (Ginny You) and the other, I assume, researcher (it’s never clear) is Starling (Marlene Mc'Cohen). The commanding military officer is Cross (Harmony Smith) and she has three soldiers with her; Hartt (Isabela Penagos), Parker (Andrea Martina) and Collins (Kennedy Anderson) – it becomes readily apparent that boredom has set in amongst the military. Also on the island, captive, is one of the three sisters, Sariel (Siomara Rubio). She is in a non-corporeal form and Davis’ job is to find out how they can kill her as the sisters seem invulnerable. Davis, who lost her family to the vampires, is determined to achieve this but the presence of Ray seems suspicious.
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| captured Sariel |
He suggests he was on a ship, one of very few survivors, looking to get to the Falkland Islands. He says that humanity has lost and tells a tale of a desperate launch of nuclear weapons, and thus the fallout would soon come to the island. This fits with the last supply run not turning up but local instruments don’t detect radiation. There is a better sensor on the other side of the island, though it needs fixing, and so Cross determines to go. Whilst Cross is out of the facility Starling releases Ray, feeds him and then takes the dubious decision to take him to see the secret bit of the lab. Following this Ray manages to persuade the women that partying like there is no tomorrow is the order of the day…
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| Starling fights back |
And, this is ok, but character decisions made are poor, and whilst the set up could be likened to Romero’s Day of the Dead with researchers and military cooped up together, this film lacks the nuances, acting chops and emotional tension that Romero’s zombie flick absolutely had. That said, we do get a flashback to the night the children were taken and Starling losing her daughter and it was surprisingly effective emotionally. Not a lot of lore on offer – a bite turns, and the sisters, they discover, are vulnerable when feeding.
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| Siomara Rubio as Sariel |
All in all, this is pretty much throwaway fluff. It didn’t experiment with lore like the pervious film did (no nun blessed blood or apotropaic tattoos) and it avoided too many close up sfx moments, where the other film had some really shoddy ones, though there are city wide air attack scenes that you know are matted CGI. That said, the filmmakers did add an unexpected emotional core by adding in the flashback I mentioned. Not great but positive aspects make it nose ahead of the earlier film 3.5 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
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