Saturday, January 16, 2010

Modern Vampires: Is there any hope?

I’m not going to bash Twilight, honest I’m not. It would be far to easy to do. I’ve seen the first film I won’t be seeing anymore. It’s not my bag. If you enjoy it fair play to you. I’ll let you into secret though vampires don’t fucking sparkle.

Ignoring the Twilight phenomena is there any hope for the modern vampire movie? Today I have seen two examples of the genre. One good the other filled with good intentions.

Daybreakers

Written and directed by the Spierig Brothers this is an interesting take on vampire mythology. Vampirism is a virus and this film looks at the consequences of the vampire food supply running out. Starring Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and Sam Neill I enjoyed this quite a bit. Lots of nice touches about how the world’s population have adapted to being creatures of the night.

Your purist vampire aficionado may not like the modernization of vampirism but personally I doesn’t bother me. I enjoy original ideas as long as they are done well.

Blood: The Last Vampire

This seemed on the face of it to promise so much. Based on the anime of the same name I expected a lot. Overall it’s not terrible. Swordfights are always good but then some arse somewhere decided that adding some truly fucking horrible CGI was a good idea. I mean come on CGI blood? That’s a big no-no in my book.

Daybreakers got it right, Blood: The Last Vampire got it wrong. In a vampire movie the first commandment - there will be blood. Second commandment characters have to get covered in the stuff.

So is there hope for the modern vampire movie? I guess the jury is still out. The good news as long as films like Let The Right One In and Daybreakers continue to get made at least there is chance.

Always from the Dark

Vampire Cheesecake

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