Kombucha – review

Director: Jake Myers

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Another unusual vampire film I first watched at Grimmfest 2025, this one was definitely geared towards vampire lore even if the central creature is a sentient bacteria… I say bacteria, but in truth it is a SCOBY that is to say a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, which ferments tea to create kombucha. Associating vampires with bacteria isn’t unknown, indeed bacterial infection is the source of the vampirism in I Am Legend.

Magdalena Conway as Rachel

It starts with a worker in an office, Rachel (Magdalena Conway), who seems distressed and has some sort of raw rash on her arm. Her mobile rings and it is her mother, Tammy (Charin Alvarez), who asks where she is. She admits still at work and suggests she is going to be replaced. Ending the call she goes to a kitchen area, opens a fridge and looks at the stock of kombucha and then turns to a supply closet, the camera lingers on bleach. Her boss, Kelsey (Claire McFadden), collects her to go to a HR check-in. There, in a room with a striking (and a tad low-key Lovecraftian) painting, Rachel declares she quits and drinks the mug of bleach….

gig

Luke (Terrence Carey) is playing guitar and singing on stage. It is his last song of the set. After, he goes to where his girlfriend, Elyse (Paige Bourne), is sat with a friend. He is annoyed as the record company representative meant to watch the show didn’t turn up. He is approached by Andy (Jesse Kendall) who he used to be in a band with. They have a beer and it transpires that Andy has gone corporate, no longer missing the endless struggle of being a musician. He gives Luke his card, the company Symbio (the same one Rachael worked for) would offer an entry level salary of $100k to creative types, no experience needed.

Paige Bourne as Elyse

Back at Elyse’s place they end up arguing after she asks whether he will go for the job. He points out that she hasn’t continued with her visual art since getting a job in a lab. She decides they should have a break and he should go home. He returns to his apartment where past due bills are piled up and decides to give the job opportunity a shot. He is shocked to discover he has already got the job off Andy’s recommendation. The company analyse other companies' cultures and introduce rituals and purpose brewed kombucha to help create a corporate unity. Kelsey suggests he try their kombucha, labelled Mother’s Secret – he refuses.

drinking the kombucha

His desk has a memorial to Rachel on it, which Kelsey suggests should have been moved and sweeps it away. At that point Tammy comes in and accuses the company of killing Rachel and warns Luke he is next... So, of course he drinks the kombucha eventually, which has astounding productivity effects but also makes changes; he starts getting the rash, has weird dreams, some violent stomach action and becomes addicted to the stuff. Elyse becomes worried and, researching the company, discovers Tammy – who tells Elyse that they are vampires, though she hasn’t worked out how they can walk in daylight. Elyse gets hold of some of the kombucha and discovers it contains blood.

vampire kit

So, the vampirism is apparent on more than one level. Firstly, we have capitalism as a vampire, with its cult like rituals the company could be said to suck the life and creativity out of the employees. I haven’t seen the short that this was based on but, by the write up, the kombucha in that was eating the employees inside out. In this it is prepping them for turning. It contains the yeast and bacteria but also blood, connecting them to Mother (the main giant SCOBY, which is like a tentacled entity) psychically. The actual turning is more on a body snatcher level (so again, corporate capitalism destroying individuality). Elyse gets biocide and fungicide to deal with it. Tammy has crosses (which don’t work) and garlic, which not only works on Mother but also the turned and is, of course, a more traditional trope.

emerging from Kelsey's nose

I enjoyed this at the festival and also watching it again at home. Luke was a character you could get behind and Claire McFadden neatly balanced corporate speak and a somewhat unhinged cult member. Mother is realised pretty well, especially given the likely low budget, and held till the end of the film so as not to over expose. A neat, thread of the comedic runs through it, but not overwhelming. There is a body horror aspect, with the turned revealing their true nature accidentally sometimes – such as a small tentacle coming out of Kelsey’s nose – and the impact of the kombucha on the original body. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Patience: Vampire – review

Director: Maarten Moerkerke

First Aired: 2026

Contains spoilers

I think it true to say that, generally, vampires get everywhere and so it wasn’t a shock when Ian contacted me to say that the first season 2 episode of crime drama Patience was entitled Vampire. I was unaware of the show but quickly found out that it is a crime drama, set in York, where the main character Patience (Ella Maisy Purvis) is an autistic woman, working in criminal records, but embroiled in police cases as the detective inspector has discovered how sharp her investigative mind is. I later discovered that this is a remake of a French series, Astrid et Raphaëlle, which is in its sixth season (at time of posting).

Ella Maisy Purvis as Patience

Being unaware of the series, coming in cold as it were, can make it difficult as you are unaware of some of the goings on, the character traits and interactions etc. It is just the hope that the vampire tale is strong enough to carry a genre interest – unfortunately the vampire aspect was not played on as much as it might. It was, I discovered, a time of flux for main character Patience as the DI who drew her in has moved on and the new DI, Frankie Monroe (Jessica Hynes), doesn’t understand why a non-copper is in her meetings and has even less knowledge and understanding of autism.

moody shots of York 

The episode starts with moody shots of York – a perfect setting for Gothic Horror that isn’t exploited really – and then we see a woman, Marina Murray (Jeany Spark) – obviously a riff on Mina Murray – enter a dimly lit photography exhibition. She is looking for artist Jonathan Starper (Julian De Backer) – again a riff, this time on Jonathan Harker – and finds him, with a wooden stake through the chest. She screams.

bites?

When the police are at the crime scene it begins to look like he has been drained of blood and Patience spots the two incisions in his neck – as an aside, these seem to be there and not be there in different shots, I can’t make my mind up whether it was an unfortunate angle thing or just poor continuity. There is commentary around this point around needing garlic. Later the medical examiner ascertains that the wounds were created posthumously and that the blood (which is completely drained) was taken through ankle incisions as he was strung up. It is also discovered that he was blood type Rh-null – the incredibly rare, so-called Golden Blood. This then directs the investigation and there is no further mention of vampires. We do get Patience carrying and returning to the library a copy of Dracula and a medical company, where blood is procured for a sickle cell patient, called Helsing. When the case is cracked, they don’t even return to the posthumous fang marks.

staked

And that is disappointing. There are plenty of vampire related episodes of shows set in the real world that exploit a willingness to believe in vampires – this did not. The vampiric aspect is window dressing and flimsy at that. I actually did enjoy the depiction of Patience, an altercation with a motor bike (its presence unnoticed until a near miss partly because of her noise cancelling headphones) and the nicely done panic attack, showed an insight to autistic reaction. I loved the neurodivergent self-help group we briefly see as they try and navigate a neurotypical world. But the vampire aspect left me disappointed (and that’s impacting the score as I am looking at it from a vampire genre point of view). This is based on a season 3 episode of Astrid et Raphaëlle, which I intend to watch to compare and contrast. 4 out of 10 reflects a lack lustre use of vampires within an otherwise interesting episode.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? Monster House

For those who are unaware, I have a keen interest in the idea of the vampiric building and wrote a chapter, Vampiric Buildings: Life Soaked into Mortar and Blood into Earth for Palgrave’s Handbook of the Vampire. I was aware of the 2006, Gil Kenan directed, Monster House and think I did see it back in the day. However, I decided to take a look with pretty fresh eyes (I remembered next to nothing about the content) and a view to see whether we could call the house of the title a vampiric building.

The film starts the day before Halloween in US suburbia, within a nostalgia dictated timeframe. It starts with a very young girl riding her trike and greeting inanimate objects. Suddenly the speeding trike stops, the animation follows a leaf but the inference is that she has flown off the bike. She hasn’t, but she is stuck on the verge of a lawn, for some reason unable to move (I’ll return to why later). Suddenly the door flies open and house owner Mr Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi, Paris Je T’aime, Hotel Transylvania 1, 2 & 3) comes screeching out of the house, yelling at the girl and in the tirade asks if she wants to be eaten alive – she runs off crying and he breaks and takes the trike.

Steve Buscemi voices Nebbercracker

This is watched from over the road by DJ (Mitchel Musso), a young boy who has been observing the antics of Nebbercracker and logging them. His parents are going away for the weekend and have arranged for Zee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) to babysit. Meanwhile, his friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) arrives but his ball ends up on Nebbercracker’s lawn. DJ notices that he hasn’t reacted and goes to retrieve it but the old man emerges and, in the tussle, collapses – DJ thinks dead. Paramedics come and pick him up – the viewer notices that grass seems to grow and grasp one of the gurney wheels, which breaks off and is then consumed by the earth. That night DJ receives phone calls from the house – making him believe that the ghost of Nebbercracker is haunting him.

the house awake

Now, we have heard local rumour from Bones (Jason Lee), Zee’s boyfriend, who lost his kite, as a kid, to Nebbercracker, who suggests the old man had been married, fattened her up and ate her (bringing in a cannibal theme – though the story is gossip and not truth). Kicked out by Zee he taunts the absent old man (and by default the house) only for the front door to open and his kite be there. With a similar lure used later with Chowder’s ball it indicates an intelligence (and memory) at play. The house consumes Bones. The next day DJ and Chowder save a prep school student selling candy, Jenny (Spencer Locke, the Vampire Diaries), and the three realise they have to neutralise the house before trick or treaters arrive.

the gang

Getting some half-baked advice (that is accurate) they are told they have to “strike at the source of life – the heart”. This is, of course, a vampire trope. They decide that the heart must be the furnace and they have to douse it (the house chimney has been active despite being empty). We have also seen that the house can morph its physical self and the front door becomes a mouth, with teeth (and the veranda can widen the maw), it opens a gullet within the hallway and the hall carpet becomes a tongue. 

Constance's grave

When Nebbercracker is released from hospital (and the kids have just escaped from inside the house) DJ realises that the house is Nebbercracker’s wife Constance (Kathleen Turner). We get the story that she was an unwilling circus freak – the Giantess – and war veteran Nebbercracker helped her escape. He was building the house when trick or treaters caused her to fly into a rage, fall into the foundations and be buried in concrete – that has become a shrine/grave for her. He soon realised that her spirit had possessed the house, that she would attack those who approached and hated Halloween. Nebbercracker was actually protected the neighbourhood and had been essentially a prisoner of his own making for forty five years.

with legs

So – is the house a vampire. Well, possessed by Constance’s spirit it is certainly a monster and arguably (through Constance) undead. It is sentient, intelligent, remembers both what happened to Constance and those who have been near. It is polymorphic, able to change from a creepy house into an animated creature – at the end of the film it takes two trees as legs and becomes mobile. The idea of striking the heart was correct. The question is, does it feed on the victims? That isn’t clear. We do know that those it consumes in the course of the movie all survive but that does not mean to say that normally it would not digest them or drain their energy – the film is silent and probably deliberately so as it is a PG movie. Assuming it does, I think we can call this a vampiric building and one whose source (ie the possession) is communicated to the viewer – in other vehicles these things can be simply alive and bad.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Katharina

I’ll be honest this Anglo/Romanian ghost story, directed by Florian Zapra and released in 2022, was somewhat excruciating. However, it definitely uses some pretty darn obvious tropes – mostly location and character backstory – and is of genre interest as a result. It centres round a load of Romanian kids (I guess they were supposed to be late teens, but some seemed somewhat younger) in Bistrița, and an English exchange student Raul (Raul Szanto). The Romanian kids decide to take Raul into the Carpathians for some camping fun.

arriving at Hotel Castel Dracula

To get there they hire a ride, and several sneak into the hatchback as too many are travelling. The driver (Florian Zapra) is a drunk but gets them to the hotel that marks their starting point. En route they establish that he does not speak English. The hotel is the real life Hotel Castel Dracula, which is some 3.5 KM from the Borgo Pass. In that respect the drive is almost parallel to the journey in Dracula - indeed when at the hotel exterior, the camera lingers on the statue there of Bram Stoker.

with the ghost

This is the nearest Raul gets to vampires, something he had been interested in, but the uncanniness begins here also, with the driver who doesn’t speak English warning Raul in English to beware of the woods (a sensible warning for forest with a large bear and wolf population, to be fair) and Raul realising that the driver has vanished from a group photo he took. This, of course, makes him as mysterious as the Count’s coachman in Dracula. As they start their hike, Raul hears something calling him and wanders off, ending up in an abandoned building – suggested later to be the shell of a hotel. Within there he sees a ghost, Katharina (Ely Ciotmonda).

Ely Ciotmonda as Katharina

The Romanian lads find him and undertake to catch the ghost – to become rich. They eventually find and speak to her and ask her to come with them and essentially assimilate into the modern world and she agrees. There is a makeover later, where her clothes are exchanged for modern ones and makeup disguises her pallor. The other genre connection the film offers occurs when she tells Raul that she is 549 years old, named Katharina (but wants a new name) and was married to Vlad Dracul (which would have been the father but I suspect they were suggesting Vlad Ţepeş). .

the gang

And that’s it, all the vampiric connection. The kids try and assimilate Katharina into their world, she ends up invading their dreams (or nightmares as they die in each dream) and then they essentially scare her off with harsh words. It doesn’t do much, generally, the acting is amateurish, in honesty, but there was at least a nub of an idea and some genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

Use of Tropes: Bat Zombies

I guess this 2023 feature, directed by Brian Orvik, couldn’t help but use tropes being a stitch together of several public domain films, with a slapdash of new footage, and a re-dub to aim towards something more comedic.

The films used include the Last Man on Earth, House on Haunted Hill, The Bat, White Zombie, The Devil Bat and Night of the Living Dead and so you can see, given the inclusion of Last Man, why tropes might be used.

Indeed, in this tale of zombie bats and infected humans, the reanimated dead are all called zombies but they can be repelled by mirrors (as opposed to not reflecting) and are killed by a stake to the heart – as per the Last Man on Earth. For that reason this deserved to get a brief honourable mention due to use of tropes. 

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Use of Tropes: Savage Love

Savage Love is an Olaf Ittenbach film from 2012, and I went in expecting the usual Ittenbach gore but it felt a tad gore-lite. I was watching the German Blu-Ray and, it turns out, 5 minutes of gore has been removed from the film’s domestic release (I’ll link the, apparently, uncut version below). International releases are therefore going to be more splatter than what I saw. Whilst technically not a vampire film it certainly did play around with tropes, not least because it seems directly inspired by From Dusk Till Dawn.

held by the mob

The film starts, however, in the middle ages and a witch, Linda (Sarita Bradley), is pulled through the forest by a knight (Andreas Pape) leading a mob. He demands something off her and she refuses, so he kills her but not before she’s spoken with an effect on her voice and cast a curse. Creatures (likely demons) appear and kill the knights and mob – she reappears glowing. Just a note about her name, she is listed as Lady Nadja on IMDb – this may be her modern-day persona and I missed the name change but she is definitely referred to as Linda in the subtitles for the opening section.

Marc and Lukas

The film proper follows two guys – hitmen, apparently – called Lukas (Philippe Jacq) and Marc (Dustin Semmelrogge, Montrak). They have scored tickets to a swinger event in, what appears to be, a brothel. The film grounds itself in pretty low-brow humour with plenty of drug references and misogynistic humour until Hell breaks loose.

Sarita Bradley as Linda

This is started by Linda preparing drinks for the ladies present by dripping her blood into champagne. This subsequently turns them into demons – though to be fair the monster type might be interchangeable between demons, vampires and zombies. However, it is important to note that they are specifically turned due to ingesting blood and this feels like a vampire trope, of course. It turns out that Linda is no ordinary witch – rather she is the actual daughter of the devil.

demons

So the plot is that she is seeking the blood of 666 victims (with Judeo-Christian names) to summon her father to earth. This might sound like satanic sacrifice except for the throwaway line that she needs to drink the blood – and brings us back to vampire genre tropes. The men fight back due to a priest there (who had spent his time looking like Andrew Eldritch up to the demons appearing) who is carrying oodles of weapons. He has also trapped many of the demons outside by sealing a perimeter with holy water (they were out attacking a teen party in the woods).

ready to rumble

This siege feels like the aforementioned From Dusk Till Dawn – though in this Lukas and Marc are able to go outside and stand calmly before the horde, with the holy water barrier between them, and start shooting them. Bullets do seem an effective countermeasure. There isn’t much more to say about the plot – it is simplistic and, in many respects, derivative – and I’ve covered off the tropes used (back from the dead, turning through blood, holy water apotropaic, aiming to drink victim’s blood and a general lift and shift of plot points out of From Dusk Till Dawn). It is, with these, of genre interest.

The imdb page is here.

Cut version on Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Uncut on Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

First Impression: Various Vampires at Grimmfest 2025

I have just got back from Grimmfest 2025 and have set to writing up my first impressions of the vampire and vampire adjacent films I saw over a great festival weekend. However, firstly, a shout out to the festival organisers and volunteers who make it such a great event year after year. A shout out to Hellbound Media, particularly Mark Adams for the chat, and also to Catherine Green who was at the festival on the Saturday. I will, of course, offer full thoughts when the films become available for home viewing.

The first film I want to offer an impression of was Landlord, which was the most traditionally vampire-genre film of those I intend to cover.

Directed and written by Remington Smith, the film follows an unnamed bounty hunter (Adama Abramson) and one of the strengths of the film was in the great characterisation with this unnamed protagonist. She arrives at an apartment complex on foot and rents a room for a week, no questions asked. She is there tracking down someone, or more accurately a briefcase he carries, but soon notices strange things.

Investigating, what sounds like, a domestic disturbance she is blocked by manager Christopher (Lance Gerard), who seems in cahoots with the local sheriff (J. Barrett Cooper), and the next day follows the manager as he removes the apartment contents and takes them to a farmstead owned by the Lawrence family. She discovers that the residents of the apartment have been dismembered and are being fed to the pigs.

Alex and the Bounty Hunter

Back at the apartment complex she discovers that the apartment with young resident Alex (Cohen Cooper) has been targeted. She enters, too late to save Alex’s mother but intervening in an attack on Alex himself. It is, of course, a vampire attack. The conceit of this being, as listed by Grimmfest, “If vampires can’t come into your home without being invited in, what would happen if they owned your housing?” The vampire, John Lawrence (William McKinney), owns the apartment complex and many residents are transient in the slum housing, easy to disappear. There is a commentary here about the landlord class as vampiric.

bitten

The bounty hunter and Alex become loose ends to tie up, of course. A nice touch came about in her not even recognising what the vampire is - despite getting up from a head shot and biting her neck, Alex is the observant one, though their knowledge of lore is limited. I liked the grittiness of this and, as mentioned, the characterisation that was built around the bounty hunter. If I had a criticism, it would be in the lighting, as I felt that the night scenes were overly dark – though that might be a screening issue rather than a production issue. The imdb page is here.

The next film to mention is Spanish offering Lily’s Ritual, directed by Manu Herrera. Possibly best described as “vampire adjacent” it starts off as a witchcraft film with three witches, Lola (Patricia Peñalver), Leo (Elena Gallardo) and Laura (Eve Ryan) taking Lily (Maggie García) out into the countryside for initiation into witchcraft as their fourth – which, of course, has overtones of the Craft. Unlike that, however, which had a power corrupts theme, these witches already had a darker purpose in mind.

Lilith

Rather than initiation, Lily was to be used as a centrepiece for a dedication to Lilith – this could be a spoiler except it is listed in the film’s blurb. As to whether they will succeed and whether Lily can survive – well that is a spoiler too far. However, I will say that this was probably my favourite film of the festival and, of course, the use of Lilith makes it of genre interest. The imdb page is here.

The third film to mention is Jake Myers’s Kombucha. I did not go into this expecting a vampire element, although the film does aim at the vampiric nature of corporations. It follows Luke (Terrence Carey) a struggling musician who is tempted – due to pressure from girlfriend Elyse (Paige Bourne) and a recommendation from ex-bandmate Andy (Jesse Kendall) – into signing up to a corporate job. The corporation, Symbio, is more than a little cult-like and forces everyone to drink a specific kombucha.

As Luke starts to change, Elyse meets the mother (Charin Alvarez) of a previous employee (Magdalena Conway) who believes that the corporation is made up of vampires – and it is that belief in vampires that puts this firmly on the radar, as well as the use of a tropes such as blood in the kombucha and the efficacy of garlic as a weapon to combat the sentient scoby at the heart of the film. A genuinely funny side-swipe at corporate mentality. The imdb page is here.

The final film to mention is Sergio Pinheiro’s Wormtown. This very much uses tropes and the Grimmfest synopsis suggested it had “just a pinch of classic vampire lore and a sly tip of the hat to Richard Matheson’s I AM LEGEND.” Set in a town where the vast majority of inhabitants are infected by worms, which have infiltrated their entire system, with a large “heart worm” that feeds on their blood and “brain worms” that alter their minds, the worms that burrow and infect are reminiscent of the blood worms in the Strain.

caught in the sun

The worms are impacted by loud sounds, modern signals (such as Bluetooth) and bright light. This is one of our tropes as being caught in the sun is deadly, with the worms quickly turning on their host. The similes with I am Legend mentioned are there and, more so, I felt a homage to the Omega Man in the scarring of infected flesh, the retreat from technology (although not as radical), and the cult-like behaviours. I also felt it tonally had a bit of a feel of Stake Land and I did really enjoy this one. The imdb page is here.

Use of Tropes: Sleep Stalker

This is a 2025 feature from directors Justin Shilton and Rob Zazzali, and I previously looked at their feature Shark Girl. Rob Zazzali contacted me to see if I would look at this new film and maybe feature it here on TMtV.

Now, had I watched this cold I would probably not have done a “Use of Tropes”, the tropes are, to be fair, sparse indeed – though I was reminded to a degree of one of the 19th Century great vampire stories, Guy de Maupassant’s The Horla (1887) but Rob had already suggested that “I realize this may be even further outside your Vampire sphere…but perhaps fits well in your “Use of Tropes” bucket.” Though the tropes might be sparse, that sort of message suggests the filmmakers knew what they were doing with them.

video channel

The film was, Rob confessed, filmed on a budget and so the filmmakers used the found footage genre to allow the film room to breathe within the financial constraints and the primary two characters are content creators/influencers. They are Abby (Gabrielle Montes de Oca, Shark Girl) and Shane (Josh Gilmer), and the opening shots of the film are the titles to their video channel. An intertitle tells us that what we are about to see was made up of socials and personal videos made before their channel went dark, We meet them proper going into a property at night that they have bought sight unseen.

sonambulist

In the morning, they start to assess the house, the work that needs doing to it, the furniture left in the house and the potential decorating. The idea is that they will chart their progress as content for the channel. The house isn’t too bad for being bought sight unseen. However, it isn't long before Abby catches Shane sleepwalking. Though not a staple of the genre, sleepwalking is a major plot point in Dracula and suggests a psychic disturbance at the very least. One thing the audience sees, which Abby misses, is when Shane tried to open the front door and she leads him back to bed, the chain being opened by a presence unseen.

happier moment

The film relies on both Josh Gilmer’s performance and small-scale strange phenomena (such as doors opening) to build an unheimlich feeling. It also concentrates on the impact on the couple, him becoming more and more exhausted and obsessed with the idea that there is something occult happening, her dismissive of that theory, wanting to get their content down and becoming scared of him and what he might do in his sleep. Her fears escalate to the point where it is inferred she has deleted footage, probably because there was unexplainable elements to it. They go to a sleep institute who give them cameras to monitor his sleepwalking, but he refuses to be medicated. Eventually Shane puts a call out for a psychic.

Yvans Jourdain as Gabriel

The psychic is Gabriel (Yvans Jourdain), who arrives when Shane is out and feels nothing but warmth and good energy in the house. However, his demeanour changes when Shane returns to the house and he suggests that the young man’s aura is off and that something non-human has attached itself to him. This then is where the film reminded me of the Horla. Rather than a demonic or spirit possession, the 19th century story has a separate, invisible species attach to ordinary folk and they are energy vampires.

Gabrielle Montes de Oca as Abby

In truth, in this, we never get to know what this actually is; spirit, demon or unknown species – there is some suggestion that it might be the previous owner, John. It could also be that John himself was targeted by the presence and the sleepwalking/possession is either John reliving his events or trying to communicate and, with this reading, the “attached thing” may not directly causing the sleepwalking. The film keeps this as broad as it can so the viewer can interpret but there is nothing to indicate that Shane is being fed upon.

feeding blood

The only other thing to mention is Abby finding him chopping (something not particularly seen but may be some lamb, or meat of some describe), pouring blood into a glass and forcing her to drink “the blood of the lamb”. Although not vampiric it was a moment of blood drinking. All in all, whilst some might want a more definitive answer as to what was occurring, the filmmakers make an off-kilter little mystery, overcoming budget by keeping things simple, relying on actors and focusing on the realm of influencers to allow a found footage aesthetic where the rolling cameras make sense.

The imdb page is here.

Creepshow: Grieving Process – review

Directors: Kailey Spear & Sam Spear

First aired: 2023

Contains spoilers

I looked at season 4 of Creepshow some time ago and, honestly, I thought the season as a whole was weaker than previous ones. Nevertheless, it was still a solid piece of spooky entertainment in the Lonesome October and that’s what matters. This review then sat in a folder on my PC for quite some time, so apologies for that,

The second episode of the season, segment 2, was called Grieving Process and whilst it was not directly named a vampire episode there were certainly tropes engaged and it is vampiric enough for a review.

Sachin Sahel as Richard

Richard (Sachin Sahel) is a Michelin grade chef whose wife, April (Rachel Drance), has just received a big promotion at work. She suggests going out to celebrate but he is going to cook. They also live with April’s sister Jean (Maemae Renfrow). He waits for her to get home and time has moved on when he receives a call from the police; April has been attacked. He gets to the car park and she is badly injured but will survive.

feed

When she gets home, she starts behaving oddly. She has no appetite and can’t keep food down. She rounds on Jean and calls her a freeloader, causing her to leave the household. She avoids the sunlight (which is one of our vampire tropes, of course). Eventually a doctor (Rebecca Davis) calls and asks to speak to her alone. When Richard returns it is carnage, with blood everywhere and April munching on the doctor’s flesh – yet in that moment she shows the first sign of emotional attachment and holds Richard’s hand.

monster face

Richard turns his culinary skills to preparing human flesh and we do see, later, that April (now living in the basement) will turn monstrous at times – with a maw of teeth in a monster face – but that is something that is not permanent. The story progresses as to how this occurred but not what she is – and I won’t spoil the how. The segment is the weaker of the two in the episode simply because the first is more inventive but the acting is solid, the effects effective and I think a 5 out of 10 is fair.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK