Shark Girl – Review

Directors: Justin Shilton & Rob Zazzali

Release date:2024

Contains spoilers

I had been approached to consider Shark Girl for review, with co-director Rob Zazzali suggesting “while not a straight-up vampire movie, it definitely has consistent vampire vibes.” But I was concerned, not because it was the directors’ first feature but because I was still haunted by memories of Sharkula. Well, first off, as far as I am concerned this can be classed as a vampire film. However, more importantly, I was not only pleasantly surprised, but I was also rather impressed.

Ryan Bertroche as Ron

The film starts with an emergency at the SoCal nuclear reactor. With limited funds the filmmakers managed to give a fair sense of the emergency visually as well as in audio. A reactor fire, they vent coolant into the sea. A shark is caught in the ejected effluent – the shark isn’t brilliantly rendered but is on for a brief moment and not repeated and gives us enough but not so much it detracts. I will say at this point that I was also taken by very competent photography and it was the professional photography through that impressed me - too often it is a failure point in budget films.

looking for likes

Heidi (Alexandra Corin Johnston) is an influencer. Now it is interesting to me that influencer culture is being used so much in horror films generally and within vampire films specifically. It is not a shock, obviously the films are reflecting times, and I do look at influencer culture along with the vampire as capitalist and zombie as consumer in my contribution to the forthcoming Toxic Nostalgia on Screen. What was interesting to me, therefore, was the portrayal of Heidi, at this point, as pleasant and exploited – this is not the normal portrayal of an influencer.

Alexandra Corin Johnston as Heidi

For instance, she sees a flyer about a missing dog and wants to take time to share it with her followers. Her boyfriend and photographer Ron (Ryan Bertroche) has no such sympathies. They head to the beach for more shots, and he wants her in the water (to capture a wet hair flip). She does not want to go in but he bullies her in and again to make her go further out. He is distracted with his camera when something grabs Heidi and pulls her under – sensibly the filmmakers showed nothing here and leave it to the imagination of the viewer – when he can’t see her, he gets the hump and leaves – dropping a terse voicemail. He assumes she has left and has no real concern for her.

beach attack

A couple are on the beach at night, she’s a little freaked as it is so dark. After a while he notices something and realises it is a body. He goes over and it is Heidi, alive but unconscious. They have no signal, so he sends his girlfriend to get help. Heidi comes round, grabs the young man and bites his neck. When the woman comes back she attacks her also. Now we see her teeth have become sharp and shark-like, but that is the only transformation aspect used. We also only see her bite and feed like a vampire – there is dialogue about victims ripped apart and body parts strewn, this is all off screen but this decision works. With knowledge of the shark aspect we accept the unseen frenzy, with the aesthetic we accept the vampire feeding.

Sumayyah Ameerah as Sienna

So, as the film progresses we see Heidi transform more in personality than physically – she becomes more predatory, unwilling to be the victim to Ron, other influencers, agents or temperamental designers. This develops further where she becomes alien to the world, indifferent, even cruel. The word alien is useful as there is a thread that borrows from Species (1995). Also involved are Christopher (Nick Tag) a wannabe reporter who went to her high school and her best friend Sienna (Sumayyah Ameerah), a marine biologist. The film's narrative is underpinned with conspiracy theory, mostly around industrial conspiracy. 

shark teeth

There isn’t a lot of lore – she is a mutation and we can say created by science, or at least the detritus science leaves behind. Pressing her head in the right place makes her paralyse for a short moment (equivalent to striking a shark on the nose and disrupting the electrical sense). She is not the only one to have been mutated and there is a serum that can be personalised to revert the mutation, we also realise that a bite can turn another. There was nearly a staking moment – a harpoon is used – but it did not strike the heart.

Nick Tag as Christopher

What I liked about this, first and foremost, was the very competent photography. The acting was good and whilst the story was a tad on the silly side the filmmakers knew what they were doing with it. I liked the idea that Christopher’s suspicions get raised as wound bite diameters were too small for a shark large enough to do the damage found – the fact that it doesn’t seem that the authorities work that out isn’t overly commented on. Heidi leaves a trail, which is too close to her for getting away with her activities, but the timeframe is small enough that the fact we only see her friends tracking her does work. I also like the choice the filmmakers made to not have bad practical or CGI effects and work on a less is more basis. Is it the greatest film, nope, but it is a film called Shark Girl for heaven’s sake. However, it looks good, has a decent characterisation in Heidi and entertained. 6 out of 10 surprised me but is absolutely fair.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

Vamp or Not? Flesh Contagium

I would be interested to see the development timeline for this 2020 Italian flick, which was directed by Lorenzo Lepori, as the concept has a world devastated by a flu virus and the vaccine causing mutation amongst humans. It would be interesting to know whether development started pre-covid pandemic and how much the ensuing world events influenced the production. Certainly, the tiny cast can indicate both shooting within lockdown and/or the tiny budget that comes with the film. It is a short one, so doesn’t outstay its welcome, but has some strong themes, including rape. In fact, it reminded me somewhat of Amando de Ossorio’s Blind Dead series in that regard – though, of course, fifty years have passed in the intervening period. The film was brought to my attention by Leila as a potential ‘Vamp’ some time ago but it has only recently been viewed.

Executors

It starts with scenes of Udolfo (Pio Bisanti) and Vera (Simona Vannelli) sat playing piano together and skinny dipping in a pond – drawing a sketch of a couple in love. However, in this idyllic scene is a discordant moment when we see a human skull within undergrowth near the pond. Later we will get an explaining intertitle about the world we are in, the pandemic, vaccine and the Government sending out Executors to deal with the mutated threat, but for now...

murdered for food

...From a small building we hear gunfire. Helmut (Lorenzo Lepori) comes out of the building, brandishing a gun, seeming to drag Ornella (Shiri Binder) along with him (though it later becomes clear they are together, after a fashion). In the small stone structure is the person he has shot and a woman who clings to him – this is a robbery, and Helmut has stolen cans of food from them. The gunfire has attracted three men wearing yellow hazmat suits, their faces obscured by gas masks and carrying weapons (a shotgun and a machete for starters). They go into the structure and finish the murder – they are, we assume, Executioners.

Vera mutated

After a run in with the Executioners (and forcing Ornella to fight, using a machete and then, having not killed her target, picking up a shotgun to save Helmut), they reach a building and break in. Helmut leaves Ornella by a door as he explores the place. He finds a room with picked clean bones and a woman, she turns and we see her face is an unnatural grey (and also that it is Vera from the start). She stabs Helmut and then bites at his neck. Elsewhere Udolfo grabs Ornella, drags her to a room, chains her ankle and then rapes her. We later hear that he is the third man to rape her, the second was Helmut and she is pregnant.

Ornella and Udolfo

He explains their situation. The vaccine has mutated Vera and she now has a hunger for blood and flesh. Whilst she acts strangely, she is still capable of speech and seems sentient. Later we see him give her a blood bag and she complains that it is his blood and particularly wants Ornella’s blood. For Ornella’s part, after being raped a couple of times by Udolfo, she seems to offer herself willingly, even developing feelings for him – she helps him hunt prey (for blood) and even binds a wound whilst he is unconscious. Vera seems jealous of Ornella.

the creature in the shoulder

He also explains that Vera has procreated with him by biting his shoulder. This has caused a thing to grow on his back, mostly eyes and sharp teethed-mouth, though it is also developing claws. He feeds it blood and keeps it dormant through drugs injected into it. Ornella calls it a tumour but he believes it to be a separate creature growing upon him and eventually it does separate from his body. It is regarding both Vera’s feeding habits and the shoulder creature that we must look at whether this is ‘Vamp or Not?’.

drinking blood

With regards Vera, she has been changed by the vaccine and despite a look that might be a low budget zombie, she uses tools (the knife), can speak, reason, feel emotions and procreate (not by turning someone but by using them as an incubator for her spawn – a thing she seems to genuinely care for). Whilst she will eat flesh, it seems to be blood that is the main draw – the same for her offspring. These are definitely vampiric and, one would argue, ‘Vamp’. The film itself is low budget splatter with themes in it that will be triggering to some.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Van Helsing Season 5 – review

Directed by: Various

First aired: 2021

Contains spoilers

Whilst I had stuck with Van Helsing from Season 1, finding it entertaining – even if it wasn’t high drama, I was less impressed with Season 4 than the preceding seasons (for completeness you can also read the reviews of Season 2 and Season 3). Because of this I did not run head first into season 5 when it dropped to Netflix.

It was something I knew I should rectify but I procrastinated and then I noticed that a box set of all 5 seasons on Blu-ray was being released. I picked it up and then did a serious binge session re-watching the first 4 seasons before hitting season 5. So, the first thing to report was that I enjoyed the revisit and, whilst I stand by my comments with regards season 4, it did hold up better – probably because the new characters felt more familiar and also because the lack of a distinct season arc meant less when you were immediately jumping into season 5.

Dracula escapes

So, we were left (at the end of season 4) with apparently immortal heroes Julius (Aleks Paunovic, Chupacabra Vs the Alamo & Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency) and Axel (Jonathan Scarfe) mysteriously dying outside the bunker to a military research lab. Vanessa Van Heling (Kelly Overton, True Blood) was stuck in the dark realm as was her (scientifically created) daughter Jack (Nicole Muñoz, also Chupacabra Vs the Alamo, Sanctuary & Hemlock Grove). The dark one – Dracula (Tricia Helfer) – had escaped the dark realm in Jack’s form, killed the president (Jill Teed) and taken her form and Jack’s sister Violet (Keeya King) failed to kill her as she escaped in a helicopter.

Jack beneath Orava castle

The season (mostly) then follows the path of getting to Dracula – however the first few episodes see Vanessa opening a portal in the dark realm that allows Jack to escape – but into the past. She appears in Transylvania (we won’t tackle the fact that she could understand the locals and vice-versa – in the previous episode she was psychically given the ability to read an obscure language, so perhaps it’s a knock on effect) at the point where the local Count (Kim Coates, Dracula the Series, Red Blooded American Girl, Innocent Blood & the Dresden Files ) and his bride Olivia (Tricia Helfer) have just had (almost miraculously) a child and that their familial name is Dracula. This is Dracula’s origin story and we discover that Olivia is to be used as a vessel for the “Dark One” – a malevolent spirit and, whilst not the source of vampirism, this could be said to be vampiric possession. Jack does do things that change the present to a degree (mostly making Dracula weaker). It was nice that the exterior shots used Orava castle.

Aleks Paunovic as Julius

Back to the present and we discover that Washington DC is a safe zone. Whether the TV broadcasts from the previous season were to there only or to more unaffected regions (beyond the walls around DC it is still the vampire apocalypse) is unclear. The series knows it was the last season and (for those characters still standing) it does its best to bring conclusions to each story and is successful in this – though don’t expect each story to have a happy ending, it’s a mixed bag and rightly so. The episode stories all work towards that end or the conclusion of the season proper – though there is one flashback moment where the wig Aleks Paunovic was forced to wear should have been sense checked.

new mutation

What I did notice was the pandemic awareness it brought to the construct – a chemical released by the Government to kill vampires, which causes chemical storms as deadly to humans as vampires (and causing powerful mutations in some vampires) cause the need to wear masks. There is also reference to ‘fake news’, the 45th president – Davis Park (Stephen Lobo) – was turned, presumed dead but is found and turned back to human (in an episode where MAGA caps are being sold in a scavenger store). This leads to the need to restore his presidency – and, of course the 46th president is a shape-shifting imposter. This didn’t feel pro-Trump or Biden, just a mismatch without a thought-out political narrative.

Dracula uses magic

Not all was welcome. Vanessa is brought back in episode 9 but I could have lived without the majority of the episode which was essentially just a clip show showing Vanessa’s past triumphs and failures (as she learns, I guess). It felt positively filler, the character needed to return but it could have happened in a scene not an episode and was simply bad TV. Being fair, it probably felt even worse having binged the episodes it came from over the previous week/week and a half. Jack and Violet felt better constructed, as the series had time to develop them, which was to the benefit of the show. All in all, more enjoyable than season 4 and a fitting conclusion to the series. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray import @ Amazon US

On Blu-ray @ Amazon UK

Quartz Vein – review

Director: Jared Masters

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

Writer/director/star Jared Masters has, according to IMDb has made a slew of low budget B movies and from what I can gather crowdfunded this one. But prodigious output is not an indication of quality and this suffers much through ambition (a sci-fi set in the near post-apocalyptic future is not going to be the easiest to film) but also through poor storytelling.

It is one of those moments where I feel cruel – but the film is its own worst enemy. But first let’s cover off the vampire aspect. From the DVD cover we get; “2047. After the humanitarian disaster, one gold miner, Eon Pax, must risk it all to save the girl. Enslaved by a wicked mutant race of gold-injecting vampires…” the blurb goes on but that’s the key, along with the tagline “Sustained by blood, immortalized by gold”.

cloaked mutant

So we start with a girl (Elizabeth Rath) running down a hillside. She is stalked by a cowled and cloaked figure. Intercepted she asks what it wants, she is an anonymous untagged seeking asylum. I assume then it is the same girl we see captured and in a rag bikini (or a clone thereof – clones are mentioned often). Elsewhere a car pulls up (looking rather well kept given it is, in 2047, a museum piece). Out of the car comes Eon Pax (Jared Masters).

Jared Masters as Pax

He is a gold prospector (variously pickaxing into a cliff face, panning for gold or even metal detecting as the whim takes him). He has a pet fly (!) and is looking for gold for evil leader of the mutants Gargoya (also Jared Masters). There then occur a series of encounters such as the one with a mutant who he kills, or with Beba (Dawson Boese) a mechanic who fixes his car and is then stung by wasps, passes out and is injected by Pax with something that will sort her out in an hour but she comes round apparently days later having been left unconscious in the desert, and also with ne’er-do-well Lippy McGhee (James F Gregory) who loses a series of dice games against Pax and so eventually steals his car.

Stealthia and Gargoya

In the meantime, he is getting dreams to follow a quartz vein and rescue a cloned girl held by Gargoya and his minion Stealthia (also Elizabeth Rath). This leads to him running around the same few tunnels and also going into (a remarkably intact) LA in order to stop a ritual where she will be sacrificed. Its all a bit of a mess to be honest, as far as stories go. We do get a vampire bite or two, however, so it’s definitely a vampire sci-fi flick.

bitten

The costumes seem to be Halloween costumes and your continuity is blown when you show a stream, then a close shot of koi carp (in a pool one assumes) and then cut back to the clearly fish empty stream and have the hero fire into the (now invisible) mass of fish to, obviously, miss. Acting is flat and dialogue over-preposterous. On the other hand you can tell that Masters believed in what he was doing and that has to count for something – in this case it counts for about 2 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Monster Pool Chapter 4

The Monster Pool series has been interesting. I previously looked at the original Monster Pool and Monster Pool the Second Chapter both as Honourable Mentions and watched the third in the series, which doesn’t appear here due to lack of a vampiric connection.

This is the fourth in the series and the stories centre around technology. The anthology was released in 2018 and, like the others, stitches pre-existing shorts together. The section we are interested in was called Ghost Houndz and was directed by Randy Smith.

In it we meet the eponymous Ghost Houndz, a paranormal investigation team who live stream their investigations. Hosted by Luther (Joel Elliott, Monster Pool the Second Chapter) and newcomer Bridget (Allison Harris, also Monster Pool the Second Chapter) they are locked in an abandoned chemical factory. However, within minutes of beginning the broadcast, tech expert Alex (April Campbell, also Monster Pool the Second Chapter), has been killed by something. The hosts, along with sound engineer Mike (Leslie Cserepy) and camera operator Zoey (Victoria Luloff, also Monster Pool the Second Chapter), run off into the factory.

mutant boy

They eventually see their attacker – a mutant boy (Ricky Elston, also Monster Pool the Second Chapter), according to the credits called Junior. If he is a mutant, however, why feature it here? Well, as the post's title suggests, they are playing with tropes. Though a child, he has a maw of sharp teeth and long talons. The pale skin seems chemically burned in places, perhaps, but his eyes are black and either they have become too accustomed to the dark inside the factory or they are nocturnal as a good beam of light is able to trap him – freezing him in place. As you watch it you recognise these as common tropes to the vampire genre, with the light impact a variant.

mama

Junior has drawn pictures, typical of any child, and as he dies (from a gunshot, as the resourceful Zoey has brought a gun with her) he whispers Mama (Nicholas Fournier). Mama is after the crew now perhaps for revenge but perhaps, also, if she has one child their might be more… One assumes that their actions are both territorial and through a need for food. This was quite a fun little film, the ghost hunter trope is a little tired but adding in a physical foe made it fun and the short length ensures it didn’t outstay its welcome. I’m listing it under the wider film it was added into and will link to the Amazon VoD of that but will also embed the short itself from YouTube.

The anthology’s imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Red Tears – review

Director: Takanori Tsujimoto

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

Red Tears is strange in that the word vampire is never used but that is clearly what these creatures are. The plot hangs loosely and there are incongruities and plot holes, yet there is balls out gory action (unfortunately between lulls) and a real strange twist to viewer loyalty.

I have to admit that it was a film that didn’t hit my radar at all when released, and it was just a random post in a Facebook group that made me aware of it. However hopefully it will start to be better known. It isn’t quite a cult classic but it does deserve some attention despite the flaws.

folded for packing

It begins with a young woman, Sayoko (Natsuki Katô), walking a street, she says that she will always feel *you* inside *me*. We cut to a man, Masaki, who is shot in the shoulder by a high velocity metal bolt. We do not see the assailant but we do see him being folded up and crammed into a suitcase. In a building he is hung from a ceiling, his head chopped off and the blood allowed to pour into a bucket. A pair of hands cup together and catch some of the blood.

sillier moments didn't gel

Hazuki (Ayaka Morita) goes to the police to try and harry them over their investigation of Masaki’s disappearance. Although she is his girlfriend, she has a photograph of a mysterious girl he met (she took it). The girl is Sayoko. The police squad is made up of Tetsuo (Yûma Ishigaki), Yamamura (Yôju Takashima) and Ozu (Masahiro Nagai). Tetsuo is the straight one (as far as methodology is concerned) but all three are used liberally by the filmmakers as comedy characters (to one degree or another) and the off-beat comedic aspect really didn’t work.

mother and daughter

Sayoko is at home preparing a meal for her mother, Masayo (Karin Yamaguchi). The mother is in a wheelchair but climbs to her feet with the aid of a walking stick and, because Sayoko had served a previous meal that Masayo disapproved of, she beats her. We cut from that scene to the cops’ superior who is a “lone wolf” investigator called Mishima (Yasuaki Kurata, Blood: the Last Vampire). When we see him, he is giving chase to a man. He eventually catches the man and they frantically fight. The pursued man eventually gets away.

Yasuaki Kurata as Mishima

Now the story meanders a bit but it is essentially this; the police are occupied with a serial killer who beheads his victims, Tetsuo wonders if Masaki is another victim who hasn’t been found yet. During the investigation he meets Sayoko and instantly falls in love with her. Actually it is Mishima who is leaving the beheaded victims behind and he is hunting monsters. Those beheaded are likely bitten or scratched as the condition will pass on. What the film does with this is quite interesting as he should be the focal point for audience sympathy but he isn’t.

aftermath of police brutality

For instance it paints Hazuki in a bad light, turning her into a weirdly obsessive and murderous character. However, when she discovers the truth that there are monsters out there, and becomes small and fearful, Mishima does not hesitate to kill her in order that she is silenced – in the police station. The monsters, our vampires, are mutations (so the story tells us) and the man who Mishima was pursuing was one – and is his main focus. He has a squad he can call on who have nightsticks with wooden stake ends. Ozu is in on it and in conversation Mishima suggests that neither Yamamura nor Tetsuo are ready to know the truth. When Ozu dies the scriptwriters forget this and Yamamura is fully aware of what’s going on.

the feeding hand

Masayo is the monster that killed the man at the beginning. Her walking stick is adapted to shoot bolts and we see her drain a victim through a mouth that opens in her hand. She can mutate to a rather monstrous form. Sayoko is fully aware of what her mother is and is complicit in helping her but she is half human and has not mutated yet. At first the film suggested that the mutation could simply trigger at some point, then it is intimated that contact with her mother’s blood would be the trigger, however, when splattered with said blood, it is only when Sayoko tastes it that her monstrous side emerges. Whilst we see a draining via the hand it needs to be noted that all of the victim’s body is used as food, not just the blood.

split and beheaded

The film does fail to keep track of things (or simply doesn’t care). So, during a fight, Mishima has a thick metal pipe rammed right through his foot. He kicks out and splits a head down the middle and beheads his enemy with the jagged pipe end, which is impressive. However later he is walking around like nothing has happened. For a moment I thought they might make him the same thing as he hunted, but they didn’t (despite the fact that he managed to push back on a moving truck with sheer strength!)

Sayoko mutates

Like I said, I enjoyed the way our sympathy actually went to Sayoko and against Mishima – this despite the fact that we discover that Masayo killed his entire family and he has been searching for her for years. As the mother laments to the daughter (with regards Tetsuo) that men (in other words her human father) take what they want and then abandon the woman I suspected they would make Mishima her father. They didn’t go down this line and it was a missed opportunity for further juggling audience sympathy.

monster face

So the plot is there but is a bit of a mess. There are issues with consistency and holes therein. But there is some nice gore, interspersed with the saccharine romance story and awful comedy moments, some fun fights and the very welcome manipulation of sympathy. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.