Day Shift – review

Director: J.J. Perry

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Made for Netflix, this feature was directed by J.J. Perry, a stunt coordinator who worked on John Wick: Chapter 2 and so the action sequences (especially the fights) are really nicely put together, as one would expect. However, this is not just an action flick and is listed as an action comedy and it perhaps falls a little flat in that ambition. It introduces some unusual lore but doesn’t explore that in the depth that might have pushed the film that little further.

break in

Staring in the San Fernando Valley, the camera takes in LA sights before following a pool cleaner’s truck. The truck is driven by Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx) and we see him cleaning a pool until he spots a car leave a nearby house and takes a box of cleaning products across to the other house. The crate has a false bottom and he retrieves weapons and house-breaking equipment.

revealed as a vampire

Inside the house he starts to look around, setting a wire across a doorway and is in a bedroom when an old lady (Danielle Kennedy) walks in from the bathroom area and asks what he is doing in her house. He shoots her, through a pillow, with his shotgun. She starts twitching and twisting, standing, her wound healing and her fangs on show. There follows a long fight sequence, during which Bud is pierced with a rogue piece of glass that he pulls from his shoulder but, eventually, he stakes and beheads her. A male vampire runs in towards him but the earlier set wire decapitates him. Bud retrieves their fangs.

Karla Souza as Audrey

At a building site a vampire is chained down in the foundations, burning and regenerating in the sun. He is watched by Audrey (Karla Souza) who says he is of the old ways and she represents the new ways. She holds her arm out of the shade of her umbrella and the flesh burns slightly. She allows the vampire to be encased in concreate. We see a sign that suggests she is a realtor and we later hear about her product, which is a suncream that allows daylight exposure, along with her plan to buy up properties around the city and embed vampires everywhere as a prelude to taking the city.

Jamie Foxx as Bud

Bud goes home and showers, supergluing the wound from the glass and rubbing an orange powder into his skin. This is later explained as a home-made concoction, necessary as vampires release a gas on expiration that attracts other vampires. There is virtually nothing done with this as a piece of lore, bar a weakly delivered gag about not getting it in an intimate place. Bud then picks his daughter, Paige (Zion Broadnax), up from school, takes her for frozen yoghurt and then takes her to his estranged wife’s house. There he discovers that Jocelyn (Meagan Good) intends to sell the family home and move her and Paige to Florida – Bud tries to convince her otherwise but unless he comes up with $10k for school tuition and braces in a week she’s going.

Snoop Dogg as Big John

This, then, is the story. Bud needs to make money. The money in vampire hunting is in the fangs (later we hear that removal of fangs condemns a vampire as it is the one part of their body they can’t regenerate. It doesn’t explain why as they might be convenient for feeding but there are other ways to open a vein) and the older the vampire, the more valuable the fangs. He goes to a trader, Troy (Peter Stormare), but the money he offers is too low. Bud has to look to re-join the Union (of vampire hunters) – an organisation he was removed from due to code violations. Top hunter Big John (Snoop Dogg) vouches for him but he is told to take bureaucrat Seth (Dave Franco) with him (who is there to catch him out). It also turns out that the old lady was Audrey’s natural daughter and she has Bud’s scent from the glass with his blood on it.

odd couple

So, whilst neither this, nor the film I will subsequently mention, are cop movies, this is essentially a buddy cop film in format. Unfortunately, the scriptwriters could have well done to watch Midnight Run (1988) prior to writing this because, for me, that sets the benchmark for an odd couple comedy in that genre and this falls very short of that benchmark. Neither Foxx nor Franco have a huge amount to work with and they never get the chemistry running that the older film had in spades. Foxx does what he can but his character often just comes across as overly gobby and a tad obnoxious, despite his best efforts, and that lets the film down. That said, Foxx works the action well and it isn’t that his performance is bad, but the character is written, if not weakly, then without much depth.

plenty of action

The other thing that lets it down is superficial lore. So, we get the “death gas” but no real use of it, the film deliberately shows us some grenades and then makes Bud explicitly describe them as garlic grenades (and he doesn’t know if they’ll work) but then doesn’t use them. A vampire, Heather (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), turned by Audrey is sent as a honey trap to discover Bud’s weaknesses, but they have a conversation that reveals nothing of use and makes the ploy dramatically pointless. When Bud confronts Heather later, she says she had no choice as Audrey made her (touching the megatext idea that a vampire controls those they turn) but she then immediately turns good and Bud accepts her (and another vampire) as they go against Audrey. There are five types of vampires but nothing of meaning is done with that except to suggest that an uber-vampire (type not age) can survive beheading. The five types should not coexist and are found in a nest together but that does not lead to any detective work.

Big John has big guns

There are references to vampire films with a mention of the Twilight franchise that actually didn’t attack the series, which is a refreshing change, and a nice the Lost Boys reference at the end of the film. In a world-building sense, one feels the writers had an idea of what they wanted to do but perhaps that world isn’t as well communicated as it should have been. However, whilst I may have pointed out failings, one can say that the film was fun in an action sense – especially around the fight sequences. It is close to two hours (notwithstanding almost nine minutes of credits) and it didn’t drag because of those sequences. 6.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Horror Noire – review

Director: Kimani Ray Smith

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

Horror Noire is a horror anthology released for Halloween 2021, which show cases films written and made by Black filmmakers, and I made the mistake of looking at the comments on Shudder before watching. Not that they were a spoiler but a mistake as it highlights the toxicity of some people. Since that first look, I’ve gone back and the film has now garnered positive responses but originally standing out was the person who accused it of being “More woke nonsense”. Firstly, what is wrong with being woke – to me it means you are an inclusive person with emotional intelligence and to be called it is a badge of honour. Second, when has an original film made from a specific, and underrepresented, viewpoint that uses equally underrepresented talent, been considered woke – this is addressing a real issue with the industry and we should applaud the fact that a range of voices are able to be heard. Lastly, if you approach a vehicle like this to give it the lowest score you can, and call it woke, then the issue isn’t the vehicle, it’s you.

Rant over, let's look at the film.

soul eater

Firstly, segments that caught my eye for various reasons were Bride Before You, which was just a wonderful piece, the Lake, which I enjoyed – though it perhaps needed a stronger pay-off – and it used a familiar trope part way through with eating raw meat from the fridge, and the incredibly imaginative Brand of Evil that does have some demonic soul eating. The latter is definitely a demon but the apparent activity is vampiric. The actual vampire segment was Sundown.

canvassing 

Sundown starts with a figure, Sammy (Lavell Crawford, Meet the Blacks), running through woods, as he runs he grabs a bird from a branch and holds onto it until he reaches a cave. Inside we see him break its neck. We are in a small town, Evantide, in West Virginia and canvassers, and couple, Shanita (Erica Ash) and Marcus (Tone Bell) are campaigning for Sarah Carson – a black candidate. They have had no luck – no one seems to be in but they are approaching the last house on their route.

Lavell Crawford as Sammy

Looking at the house, Shanita is sure they don’t want to go there – she served in Afghanistan and was always known for her keen instincts. Marcus, however, insists they go. They actually get an answer this time from a teen, Ellie (Zoe Lawson Dangar), who hollas to her mama and asks who she’ll be voting for – the shout confirms she’ll be voting for the n-word and that is enough – Shanita and Marcus get out of there. They meet up with the other canvassers, and it is notable that they are all white and they all struck out. Shanita asks where there is a bathroom and is told there is one in the post office.

sundown sign

She goes in and, when she starts shouting for him, Marcus follows as do all the others. There is a large sign on the wall “Whites only within city limits after dark” and in the conversation that follows Shanita explains that it is a Sundown Town – a phenomena of segregation that was often a precursor to violence for any Black person who broke the rule. The segment makes a lot of points here, one white canvasser didn’t even notice the large sign when she went in, another asks what it matters as it is in the past – ignoring the historic hurt and also the echoes that reverberate into the present.

the feast

Shanita and Marcus leave and find their tires have been slashed – as has all the others (one of the canvassers accuses them, until another steps in and points out that they couldn’t have and their tires are slashed too). By now it is dark and the sound of a fiddle is heard as the town mayor, Constantine Erebus (Peter Stormare, Marianne, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, the Batman Vs Dracula & the Brothers Grimm), appears and tell them it is a special night, the moonlight festival, and invites them to a feast – Shanita is not happy.

staked

They get to the feast and the Sundown sign is mention but suggested to be a historical hangover that was meant to have been removed. Erebus calls Sammy – the first Black local we’ve seen and the man from the beginning of the segment – who says he’ll get it taken down. Long story short there is a cut finger and Ellie reveals the town’s true nature – it is a town of vampires. They hunt down the fleeing canvassers – though Erebus warns them, “don't eat your dark meat!” Shanita and Marcus manage to stake one vampire before being separated and Marcus being captured.

Buffy the f*ck up

Shanita is rescued by Sammy who then reveals he is a vampire – but kind of a vegan as he only eats birds and squirrels and the like. In an interesting turnaround he reveals he had put up the Sundown sign to try and warn off any Black visitors – Erebus has a liking for feeding on Black victims, Marcus is likely alive, saved for the festival finale and Sammy was turned by accident. It’s time for Shanita to get some weapons (they are in the South, there are plenty around), rescue her man and, as she puts it, “...Buffy the f*ck up.”

Shanita and Marcus

This was fun – and yes there were serious messages underneath (interestingly the white canvasser who didn’t see the sign and the one who said it was in the past are both turned and forced to stay – unhappily – in the vampire town) but the segment was also made for laughs. There was bickering banter between husband and wife but the banter always felt true, there were some clear nods towards the wider genre and, whilst it didn’t do anything that new it did it with some style. We don’t get much lore – just sunlight and staking really – but worth a watch as are the segments I mentioned above, though the running length is a bit of a marathon at 2.5 hours. As always the score is for the vampire segment only – 6 .5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK

Marianne – review

Director: Filip Tegstedt

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

This Swedish film features a creature called a Mare. Now the experts all have different variants of the Mare. Melton says “closely related to the incubus was the mare (Old Teutonic)”. Bunson added more detail and said, “The mar a (mare) generally represented the active terror of the night (the nightmare), an incubus or succubus, and an oppressive or crushing weight during the sleeping hours.” Under Mara he associates it with the alp and says it has a taste for blood. Bane suggests that “The alp, when it attacks a horse, is usually referred to as a mare” and suggests the mara “is created when a child dies before it could be baptized”.

Mare's teeth

All these different takes have a broad consensus that it is a creature that acts somewhat like a succubus/incubus – in that generally it is seen as an energy vampire that comes upon the victim at night; rather than a sexual assault, however, the mare causes terror and sleep paralysis. The terror that comes in the night is, of course, the nightmare.

picnic

This film begins with a picnic. We see Krister (Thomas Hedengran, Frostbite), Eva (Tintin Anderzon) and their 10 year old daughter Sandra (Saga Viljeståhl). Krister walks into the forest a little way and makes a call, we hear him say he is with his family and say to the caller that he loves them. Sandra comes up behind and asks who is talking to, Eva is not far behind. Cut forward 9 years later and Sandra (Sandra Larsson) is at Eva’s funeral. Krister holds a baby, Linnéa, who is crying – he passes her to Sandra and leaves the church.

at the funeral

We discover, as the film goes on, that Krister and Eva split up and, some years later, got back together – Krister leaving his lover. Linnéa was born after their reconciliation. They had left Sandra babysitting when they went out for a night away. Krister told the police that their car was hit by a car driving on the wrong side of a bridge’s carriageway. Eva was killed and the driver of the other car then threw themselves over the side of the bridge. This has left a very broken home. Sandra was already dressing in a Goth/metal fashion and is with an older bloke known as Stiff (Dylan M. Johansson), she has little time for her dad, doesn’t want to go back to school and is generally rebelling.

face above him

Early on in the film we start hearing, as Krister sleeps, a noise – it becomes apparent it is grinding teeth. As the film progresses the mare (for that is what is making the noise) becomes more and more apparent. Krister wakes unable to move, at first feeling the presence in the room, later being sat upon and suffocated. He is even wounded by the mare – though when he shows the marks to a doctor they are barely visible.

Mare's exorcism

He is encouraged in the belief that he is being visited by a supernatural creature by Stiff – who believes in the supernatural and claims to have seen an elf when he was a child. It is he who suggests the visitor is a mare and describes them as a woman, back from the dead, who feeds on life essence and normally has red hair. This fits for Krister as he has already described a pale woman with red hair in a green coat to his counsellor, Sven (Peter Stormare, the Batman Vs Dracula, Dylan Dog: Dead of Night & the Brothers Grimm). Stiff tells him that a line of linseed at the door should keep the mare at bay and the two concoct an (unsuccessful) exorcism including a “mare cross” (a pentagram) and a sheet soaked in sweat as mares don’t like human sweat – to me counter-intuitive as they cause sweat when producing the night terrors.

Peter Stormare as Sven

Sven doesn’t believe in the mare, of course, worrying that Krister is developing paranoid schizophrenia and wants to refer him to a psychiatrist. Sandra is also less than impressed with the idea and dismissive of the concept, even when their relationship is improving. She finds a notebook full of scribbled names including her, Linnéa, Eva and someone called Marianne (Viktoria Sätter), which looks like it supports Sven’s theory.

Sandra Larsson as Sandra

The film kind of split me. The revealing of what happened – on the bridge and in Krister’s relationships is non-linear and shown in dreams. But the on-running family drama was slow and Sandra was at the same time a story lynch pin and an annoying character who seemed to whine endlessly (well she is a teen, I suppose). Krister ends up coming across as sympathetic when facing his daughter’s barrage of angst – despite the fact that we know he is controlling of his daughter and has a dark past. This probably was helped as the film moved forward and Krister was victimised more and more by the mare (or became more and more mentally ill – depending on which you believe) as Thomas Hedengran absolutely sold this to us.

physically marked

The horror moments (and they are moments) were vastly superior to the family drama, Filip Tegstedt working around budget by showing glimpses and details only, using darkness to obscure his monster and an excellent use of sound. The sound of grinding teeth puts the viewer on edge, but in the right way to accentuate the scene. This less is more attitude continued into the film and I don’t know whether expanding those sections would have helped? Perhaps just a better pacing and perhaps a little less angst was the key. 5.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night – review

Director: Kevin Munroe

Release date: 2011

Contains spoilers

So a long, long, long time ago I put a pre-order in for the Dylan Dog DVD at Amazon UK. After a while I got an email saying the film had been put back, and then a further email to the same effect every so often. Eventually, having been determined to buy the UK disc, I cancelled the order and ordered the US disc – after all, by that time it was cheaper than the UK pre-order price. Is there a moral to that story? Not really, unless it is to point out to the various companies involved in film production and distribution that messing your customers around is uncool.

Brandon Routh as Dylan

What else was meant to be uncool was Dylan Dog itself. I had heard bad reports, especially about leading man Brandon Routh. Well I didn’t find it all that bad, to be perfectly honest. It isn’t the best movie ever made and Routh isn’t the most charismatic lead (though as it is played like a noir he doesn’t have to be that animated), but I have seen much worse.

Anita Briem as Elizabeth

The film begins with a woman, Elizabeth (Anita Briem), cooking dinner for her and her father. She puts out a plate when she sees blood drip onto the porcelain, pooling from the ceiling above. She runs upstairs to find her father dead and something furry burst through the window and escape into the night. We then get a Sam Spade like voice-over about things that die and come back and how you would call Dylan (Brandon Routh) or you used to, but he is out of that game now. Once, however, he had been the line between them and humanity.

Sam Huntington as Marcus

Dylan, in the here and now, has a gun aimed at his head. The gunman is a husband that Dylan caught and photographed cheating on his wife and he blames Dylan for the fact that he is going to lose everything. Dylan has little sympathy but when the man suggests that his wife cheated first he offers his services… at the right price. Marcus (Sam Huntington, Being Human (US)) comes in with a new camera for Dylan. He wants to be Dylan’s partner, rather than a general dogsbody, but Dylan doesn’t want one. There is a new job in the Garden District (the film is set in New Orleans). It turns out to be Elizabeth, who was given his card (from the old days) by a priest. Dylan walks away.

vampire blood is a drug

Next we visit the vampires of the film. The vampires are marketing their own blood as a designer drug that you inhale through a nebuliser and it makes the user, strong and – if the person we see is anything to go by – really rather annoying. Later we hear that humans addicted to vampire blood are called ghouls. The leader of the vampires, Vargas (Taye Diggs), is informed that there has been a werewolf murder, a fact that doesn’t interest him until he hears that the victim had imported ‘the heart’ from the old country – this is the artefact at the centre of the film.

wake up dead

Marcus is at the office and is attacked by a zombie and killed. Now one thing I did like was how they did the zombies in this. Flesh-eaters become ripped super-zombies (that didn’t work awfully well  visually to be honest) but the normal zombies are worm eating undead that maintain thought and personality. They do, however, rot. Enter the bodyshop – a place where zombies can buy new parts (arms, legs, heads!). Marcus comes back as a zombie and some of the best moments of the film surround him coming to terms with his condition.

Peter Stormare as Gabriel

As for Dylan, he take the case – following Marcus’ murder – and is sent down a path where he has to confront the head of a werewolf family, Gabriel (Peter Stormare, the Batman Vs Dracula), run in with Vargas, confront both his past and a killer zombie, face a monster hunter and defeat the ultimate undead. All in a day’s work! Seriously though, the film had promise that it doesn’t achieve but it is quite fun for all that.

burnt by the sun

Vampire wise we discover a few bits and bobs. They can be staked to be killed and sunlight does burn them. One punishment they might give to one of their own is burial, which can lead to insanity following the claustrophobia, hunger and worms eating through their brains. Ancient vampires might go into a hibernation and the vampire clans keep those vampires safe in storage.

staked

The special effects aren’t the best in the world in this, though they are ok in places. But I did like the overall premise. The noir aspect helps Routh get away with his deadpan performance but Huntington gives a nice, quirky performance. The film is based on a comic series and I really should pick the English translation up at some point and see if it achieves what the film should have. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Vamp or Not? The Brothers Grimm

This 2005 film by maverick and genius Terry Gilliam is set in the eighteenth century in French held Germany and follows the Brothers Grimm, Will (Matt Damon) and Jake (Heath Ledger). It was regular reader Crabstix who suggested that I look at the central villain under the auspices of a ‘Vamp or Not?’

Of course the central characters are the famous tellers of fairytale and the film begins with them as children when Jake is sent to sell their cow for money to buy medicine for their sister. He returns, having met a stranger on the road who swapped the cow for magic beans… of course he has been conned.

As adults we see two men with opposing world views. Jake still very much believes in magic, it seems, whereas Will is a realist. However they now travel from town to town vanquishing supernatural evil. It’s just that the evil does not exist, they use their men to fake hauntings, troll invasion etc and then solve the mystery. They are con artists.

The village of Marbaden has problems, the young girls of the village are being taken one by one and the occupying French General Delatombe (Jonathon Pryce) is not happy. He has his Italian torturer Cavaldi (Peter Stormare) capture the brothers and makes them an offer they cannot refuse – find out who is at the bottom of the disappearances and stop them, or die.

Once they get to the village, however, it becomes clear that the forest is enchanted, this centres on a tower at the heart of the forest in which, legend says, a Queen hid herself (unsuccessfully) from the plague that ravaged the lands. She is said to have cast a spell to make herself immortal and it becomes readily apparent that she had been successful.

The film itself lifts from many, many fairytales but it is the Mirror Queen, played by the gorgeous Monica Bellucci, who we are going to concentrate on in this. Of course, she fits in many of the fairy tale archetypes herself, not least the Snow White wicked Queen, and thus has more than an overtone of the witch archetype about her. As we have seen before, however, witches and vampires share a common heritage in traditional folklore.

The Mirror Queen was successful in her spell for immortality but, as we first see her, we realise that immortality does not mean eternal youth. This is exemplified in the script where Jake explains that the years “haven’t been kind, I can tell you that.” She is decrepit and her nails and hair have grown for 500 years.

However, in the mirror, she is still her young and beautiful self. This is clearly a Snow White tie in – mirror, mirror and all that – but if we look to vampire lore for a moment it is almost a complete switch around. Rather than not having a reflection she has an idealised reflection. The mirror itself plays a larger role which we will get to soon.

The witch has enchanted a woodsman, through a broach that pierces the heart, and turned him into, not only her servant but, a werewolf. We have had films in the past where the werewolf is slave to a vampire’s will. She is using him in her quest to gain twelve young girls whose youth she will steal. Stealing youth is not an unheard of concept in vampire films, Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter features such a beast – but it is the methodology she uses that caused Crabstix to suggest I look at this.

She will perform a ritual spell on the night of the blood moon. This involves using the blood of the girls, a pinprick from each. Stealing blood to regain youth was the foible of Countess Báthory and was highlighted in the film Countess Dracula amongst others (indeed the look of the aged Queen reminded me of Countess Dracula a little). Whilst only drops have been taken in this, rather than bathing in the stuff, she does ingest the blood as part of the ritual and, one guesses, the ingestion of the blood makes a connection to the twelve girls.

I mentioned the mirror lore comes into this again and this is in the fact that it is through the mirror that she can be stopped; smashing the mirror smashes the Queen.

The film, as I said, borrows from many fairytales and folk stories. The mirror Queen herself is a composite of several stories, she is very much a witch but her immortality, coupled with a blood ritual that helps her regain youth puts this on the periphery of the Vamp radar at the very least. The film itself was one that I was not too sure about on the first watch, subsequent views have endeared it to me – but I find that sometimes with Gilliam films. It certainly is very sumptuous and has an undercurrent of irreverent humour that one would expect from something Gilliam was involved with.

The imdb page is here.