A couple of weeks ago I ran into Tim League, the founder of the Original Alamo Drafthouse and the head man at Fantastic Fest, when he was in LA for the American Film Market. AFM exists to give distributors and festival programmers a chance to see brand new movies – hundreds of them – and buy or program them. Tim was looking for movies to bring to Fantastic Fest 2010, and I wanted to know if he had seen anything he liked.
One of the movies Tim had enjoyed was a vampire movie. ‘I’m so sick of vampires and zombie movies,’ Tim said, ‘But they keep making good ones.’
Yeah, on the surface that sounds crazy as The Twilight Saga: New Moon opens to huge box office this weekend, but the truth is that the very tired vampire genre still has some life in it. Here are four recent (and upcoming) vampire movies that are one hundred percent worth your time.
Let the Right One In (available on home video. Click here to buy it through CHUD)
The movie: If I were to make a top ten of the decade, Let the Right One In would be a major, serious contender. Think about that: a vampire movie that is one of the best films of the last ten years. Tomas Alfredson’s adaptation of the Swedish novel by John Ajvide is sweet and creepy and scary and wonderful. It’s a beautiful coming of age story and a genuine horror story at the same time.
The vampires: Like many of the best vampire story, Alfredson and Ajvide don’t need to reinvent the vampire. Young Eli was changed long ago and lingers in the body of a (seeming) young girl. Sunlight’s bad, she needs to drink blood (which is attained for her by a human familiar; while not Renfield in nature her sidekick is just as enthralled with her), and she’s got super strength, can fly and perform other supernatural feats.
Thirst (available on home video. Click here to buy it through CHUD)
The movie: Park Chan-Wook’s take on vampirism is just as strange as you might expect it to be. When a good-hearted Catholic priest becomes infected with vampiric blood he suddenly finds him plunged directly into the world of the body, while people begin to think he’s a messenger from the world of the spirit. Unable to contain his new desires he begins drinking blood and then carrying on with a childhood friend. Park doesn’t keep a tight rein on his themes, but he does create a perfect downward spiral for these two.
The vampires: Again, mostly traditional. Interestingly, crosses have no impact on this priestly vamp, although that’s becoming more and more common as the vampire myth has evolved from the supernatural to the science fiction (Thirst and Daybreakers really treat vampires as more or less scifi concepts). Blood needs to be drained, and it brings with it super strength and plenty of intense sense – the vamps in this can hear your heart beating from very far away. And sunlight remains a big no no for these vampires.
The Revenant (looking for distribution. Keep up to date at the official site)
The movie: Hey, I didn’t say that all of these films would be easy to get your hands on. This one’s worth the wait. You can read my review from Fantastic Fest here, but the gist of it is that writer/director Kerry Prior has created an oddball, bad ass, rambling and epic story about a GI who comes home from Iraq seemingly dead. But in fact he’s a revenant, which is a fancier way of saying vampire. He gets together with his slacker buddy and all sorts of really unexpected things happen; Prior ups the ante again and again and he keeps taking the story in new, strange and fun directions. A truly one of a kind movie.
The vampires: The revenants sleep during the day – they just conk right out and appear to be dead – and they have extraordinary strength and reflexes. Like the orginal Dracula, the revenants must drink blood to keep themselves from decomposing. They’re also extraordinarily hard to kill – a disembodied revenant head lives on and speaks using a vibrator to stimulate its mangled vocal chords – but sunlight does seem to do the trick.
Daybreakers (hitting theaters in January)
The movie: I love this movie. It does right everything that Stephenie Meyer did wrong with Twilight. Australian filmmaking duo the Spierig Brothers have envisioned a complete, enveloping world that is rich is detail and mythology. It even includes a vampire chimpanzee! Set in the near future, after a vampire plague has turned most of the Earth’s population into bloodsuckers, Daybreakers follows a vamp hemobiologist who is looking to create synthetic blood to replace the rapidly dwindling real blood supplies. See, the vampires have hunted humans to the edge of extinction. When he runs into a human resistance group he unlocks a secret that might forever change the balance of power in the world.
The vampires: Very traditional, although very science fiction. The vampire plague began ten years prior to the film’s opening and it swept the globe quickly. There’s a whole industry that has sprung up around sun-proofing cars, and vamps use extensive tunnel and subway systems to get around during the day. They need blood and if they don’t get it they begin devolving into awesome looking savage bat monsters called Subsiders. But there’s one key element to the Spierig Brothers take on vampirism that feels unique and shouldn’t be revealed until you’ve seen the movie…
14 comments
The whole synthetic blood theme in Daybreakers is very similar to that of True Blood. However the movie sounds utterly fascinating. Speaking of which, Devin, what is your stance on True Blood?
This is one major reason why, from what I've heard, Twilight bothers me…the mythos of the vampire and werewolf are completely disregaurded. Vampires can not go out in the sun and need blood – they do not sparkle in the sun and the Lycans need a full moon and can not transform at will. It is OK to modify the archetype or create a clever way around it but you can not just rewrite all the rules…that is lazy storytelling.
I don't see New Moon here so I'm assuming you haven't seen it yet and will be updating this list once you have. Good day, sir.
Spoilers: The werewolves in Twilight are not actually werewolves. Seriously. I guess that's why she can get away with it.
i actually really liked "perfect creature". I thought it was interesting to have vampires as the benefitting humans by protecting them and such. Great analogies of vampires with the clergy. Damn better job than fucking "thirst", which discarded ALL of its ideas and themes five minutes after introducing them
Only problem with LTROI was the crazy cat lady sequence with the horrible cgi associated with it … really took me out of the 80s period-sensibility the film had otherwise perfectly recreated. Maybe the worst use of cgi since the hyenas in the Exorcist remake.
The synthetic blood thing has been around for awhile. They also use it in "Sundown," with David Carradine and the Chin.
In traditional werewolf mythology they don't need the full moon to change. Often times the change was brought on by wearing animal skins or applying a salve to the body.
Ultraviolet. BBC 6 Part Series from 1999.
Very good. Had a synthetic blood motif running through it.
I thought I was the only one who had vampire fatigue. There's a really good short film that screened at Screamfest in LA this year, called "The Familiar". http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1223224/
Ugh. It's annoying how "traditional" vampire and werewolf mythos is determined by movies and not the myths the movies are based on.
Werewolves don't need a full moon.
Vampires can go out in the day, they're just weaker then. READ Dracula if you don't believe me.
anyone else find let the right one in unremarkable? sometimes i think people love it for the 8 year old pussy shot, which appears to be rashless.
The swimming pool shot in Let The Right One In is worth the price of admission all by itself.
Many of Were mythos didn't need the full moon to change; as one of the others above mentiond a skin or salve can do it I believe that is a Native American mythos. Other causes were extreme stress, anger or fear. Some Lycans who have been a Were for so long have the ability to change at will. The full moon is the time where a Were uncontrolably changes its also the change where they have the greatest strengths. As for vamps in sunlight the most definately do not sparkle I found that as one of the lamest adaptation of why a vamp doesn't go into the sun. There are myths of certain cultures that can tolerate the sun with streangth depletion and ultimately if out long enough death.
Comments are shown as archived from the original site; new comments are closed.