Andrew M. Boylan's Blog

Director: Quinn Gardner

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

This one snuck onto Amazon, almost missed as their search engine for Prime videos goes from bad to worse, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to get when I pressed play. In essence it’s a character driven, horror themed comedy and I was rather tickled by it.

It starts with a couple of vloggers staking out a cemetery. After being scared by Milton (Darren Ewing) from the mortuary, they are confronted by a Goth/rock vampire and then we hear them got off-screen. We then move to Martin (Joe Komara), sat morose at the breakfast table. His voice-over tells us that he and his wife, Linda (Ashley Hargrove), have been married fifteen years and are kind of in a rut. They have a teen daughter, Morgan (Ava Connolly), and he has a boring job. Things are about to change…

bitten
Martin is out at night when a woman grabs and bites him, leaving him fallen to the floor. When he eventually gets up he is a vampire (and has a great set of bite marks). He gets home but can’t enter the house, phones Linda and, eventually, she invites him in – bemused by what he suggests is a role play. Interestingly he knows what he is and knows (by instinct or pop culture?) why he can’t enter the house. He discovers, in the bathroom, that he has no reflection and, when trying to shave by feel, cuts himself and immediately heals.

Linda and Martin
Getting in bed he decides that it will be torture, drawn by Linda’s aroma and neck. He eventually decides to sleep in the garage (or sit up, as he figures he’ll sleep by day). Linda has a dream and in it is Milton from the morgue and he is revealed as a vampire. In the morning Martin is in bed when Linda gets up and opens the shades. Martin leaps off the bed and then discovers he isn’t burning (later he’ll use sunblock as he’s worried about more direct sun). Of course Linda realises what he is and they research off the internet. They also discover he is horny (yes, the pep pops in their marriage), holy water burns (she gets some from a nearby church) and later we discover it will destroy a vampire if they are sprayed with enough. Strangely, given the holy water, crosses don’t work, neither does garlic, but staking kills, they have eye mojo and stabbing in the eye is icky.

doused with holy water
Later we’ll discover that whilst a deep bite turns, a nibble won’t immediately and it takes three, and the vampire is staking a claim to the victim being nibbled. We also discover that the town is suffering a bit of a vampire infestation. Later Martin will get Linda some fake fangs but the vampires can smell the aroma of someone still human. And, you know what, the film works, really quite well. The performances by Ashley Hargrove and Joe Komara are central to this; her exasperated at times, he trying to behave but also embracing his vampirism like a naughty schoolkid, with a genuine chemistry between them. It is their presences and performances that make this a genuinely funny flick. 6.5 out of 10.

The episode's imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Director: Ryan Prows

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

Gangs, cops, vampires… presented in a gritty thriller style… on the surface this should wow and, at first, it certainly holds the viewer attention and yet it loses itself, cutting from realism (albeit a realism with vampires) to silliness without breaking stride. This really should be better than it is, and that’s a crying shame.

Wazi injured
It starts in an interrogation room and Wazi (RJ Cyler) is injured with a stone spearhead (for want of a better description) stuck out of his side. A cop, Captain Freeman (Nick Gillie), enters the room and has him sign a statement (presumably that he has not dictated), signing a second copy when Wazi gets his blood on the first. Cutting backwards and we see Wazi on his bike. He goes to a car and meets Primo (Zuri Reed). Theirs is an illicit romance, him being a member of the Crips and her a member of the Bloods.

Zulu ring
He has clearly read too much in as he has brought her a ring (quickly suggesting it as a gift not a proposal). The ring actually belongs to his mother (Nicki Micheaux) and is of Zulu origin. Suddenly there is a car there and members of the Night Patrol – an elite gangbusting police task force – are there. Among them is Ethan Hawkins (Justin Long, House of Darkness). He is expected to execute Primo and does. Wazi runs and chase is given but as one of the Night Patrol finds him and is about to approach, he notices the ring and backs off. Hawkins has Wazi’s bike and it has his gang tag painted on it.

Carr and Hawkins
Hawkins is giving a talk to a bunch of highschoolers. A man bursts into the gym, his face covered and fires off a machine gun. Hawkins falls, the man terrorises a student when Hawkins sits up and congratulates his partner Carr (Jermaine Fowler) – the machine gun firing blanks. Outside, however, he remonstrates with him, it wasn’t part of the script. Carr was brought up within the Crips community and Hawkins asks about the tag on the bike – Carr does recognise it, as Wazi is his brother, but suggests he would ask his brother whose tag it is. Later Carr discovers that Hawkins has made Night Patrol and this is the last day rolling together.

Freddie Gibbs as Bornelius
Wazi takes himself to Bloods territory to tell their leader, Bornelius (Freddie Gibbs), that his sister Primo has been killed. The Bloods make him take them to the scene, where her body has been torn apart. The Bloods have a debate as to whether this was the work of demons or lizard people (a taste of the off the rails moments to come). Meanwhile Hawkins is actually trying to infiltrate, rather than join, Night Patrol. His father had been in the group and had vanished. He does go out of his way to protect Wazi for Carr.

metal fangs
So, what is happening? Night Patrol are vampires and they are led by Hawkins' father who is bringing his son into the fold. They forcibly turn him and intend to wipe out the Crips (and all those living in the Housing Project they run). The film, as mentioned, has been gritty thriller (bar the conspiracy spouting Bloods) and this feels like it is continuing when the vampires put in metal fangs. However, we then discover they are ultra powerful – headshots heal for instance. But then a stake through the heart heals too. It appears nothing can hurt them.

vampires, or...
There is a debate about what they are – with Wazi saying vampire – and mentions made of obayifo. According to Bane, obayifo are energy vampires from Ashanti folklore, in this repurposed to Zulu folklore but Ghana is a long way from South Africa. In the film they say (during this fairly long discussion, in the open, as the vampires devastate the Housing Project around them) that obayifo have pink skin, iron teeth and they attack the prey from trees above. They also name them Asanbosam, which according to Bane do hunt from trees though it is feet and hands that are iron and again is folklore from Ghana (and the Ivory Coast). What the film does, more than anything, is draw a line between the white cops and black gang members – at one point suggesting “One thing the colonizers all fear? Our Blackness.”

Zulu artefacts
This might be on the nose but is fine as a central premise (even if the exposition was ill-placed as the three in the discussion should have been up to their knees in vampires). However, where it goes wrong (and MASSIVE SPOILER) is in making the only thing that can kill them being Zulu artefacts but, worse, having the artifacts (ring and the spearhead that Wazi had embedded in his side at the opening of the film) glow green. Honestly, the ring looked like we’d just flipped into a Green Lantern film. We then get Hawkins flying and his jaw splitting and fanged like a Reaper Strain vampire – the realism they toyed with out of the window by this point.

reaper strain
And it is a shame. Even though the central messaging was on the nose, this worked. The gritty realism and the low key on supernatural tropes worked (having metal fangs was a nice touch). But then the mismatched power, the artefacts, the sudden ability to fly… it undermined everything the film had successfully built. Because I liked the film until the ride started getting silly I’m going to settle for 5 out of 10 – if they had maintained the tone and eschewed the superhero-like aspects it would have been higher.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

A little over 15 minutes in length this Will Nutter directed and written short was released in 2025. By the language and visuals, set in the 19th century, it certainly looks great. The black and white photography sets the atmosphere – though it does go, deliberately, very dark in places.

It starts with Edmund (Steven Hardie Colgan) narrating, as he composes a letter to his mother. He has left England and is sailing in pursuit of his love Mira (Skye McVie), who has been taken by a vampyr (Liam Robertson). Once ashore he finds someone to aid him in his hunt, known simply as the Hunter (Donnie Baxter) and together they set off to the castle.

The hunter and Edmund
Of course, one has to assume everyone is on the level… and to discover if they are, you’ll have to watch the short. Colgan carries the film, earnest but bumbling, though Baxter’s Hunter is a gruff, believable veteran of vampire hunting. The castle used for filming (I believe Lennox castle in Scotland) was a great location – though I think I may have tried to scrub the little bit of graffiti caught on camera in post-production. A minor point.

The imdb page is here.

I had never read Shirley Jackson’s 1959 novel, which is shameful given one of my favourite films, The Haunting (1963), was based on it. I recently rectified the situation and read the novel, though I didn’t expect to give an honourable mention here.

I knew that the 1963 adaptation was pretty faithful to the book but there is nothing within the film that could have it (and the house at the centre) labelled as a vampiric building text. This is not true of the later (and also excellent) Mike Flanagan adaptation, The Haunting of Hill House, which made the house vampiric (and the least said about the 1999 film the better).

The house in the novel, however, is immediately coded as living and sentient (if mad):

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

There is a suggestion that it sought to feed from inhabitants when we are told, “The sense was that it wanted to consume us, take us into itself, make us a part of the house, maybe—”. Had the theme been expanded on then I would have been suggesting that the house was, indeed, vampiric but, as a throwaway, I will say it certainly flirts with the trope and this could lead to a vampiric reading.

The mention is offered as Jackson certainly draws the reader to the vampiric on a couple of occasions by associating the house with an imagined vampire inhabitant. In one exchange about housekeeper Mrs Dudley we get:

“‘She probably watches every move we make, anyway; it’s probably part of what she agreed to.’
“‘Agreed to with whom, I wonder? Count Dracula?’
“‘You think he lives in Hill House?’
“‘I think he spends all his week-ends here; I swear I saw bats in the woodwork downstairs.’”

Later we get another mention, whilst discussing Mrs Dudley leaving the house in a car with two others (one of whom was her husband, who the characters had met at the gate of Hill House, but who the second person might have been is never discussed further):

“‘First Murderer must be Dudley-at-the-gate; I suppose the other was Count Dracula. A wholesome family.’”

The use of Dracula is interesting as Castle Dracula was meant, at one point, to be intimately connected with the vampire, collapsing on his death. In this case it is a mention in passing but I would suggest the mention was deliberately used in order to invoke a particular Gothic feel for the reader. Nevertheless, the invocation of Dracula within the text opens the opportunity for me to mention the book here.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Director: Matthew Luke Tucci

Release date: 2026

Contains spoilers

Vampire machines appear in genre films on occasion and, on some occasions, those machines are cars/motor vehicles. In this case, the vehicle is a hearse and that seems rather apt. As I’ll explore, we don’t see the hearse feed, nor do we get a sense of any supernatural healing that some variants of the trope show. We do get a definite impact on the driver/owner though. Perhaps we might consider it possession even.

hearse for sale
As the film starts, we find ourselves in small town USA and we see a hearse with a for sale sign, the vehicle looks derelict. Willoughby (Louis Rocky Bacigalupo, Vampz!), or Will, is sat in a tow truck. It is the third time this week his car has died. The sheriff (Johnny Halloran) stops on by before Will gets the tow truck to drop the car off at his Uncle’s garage and drop him off at work.

co-workers
Work is a tele-sales place, with his friends Lavash (Marat Shad) and Sid (Anthony Mcgee). After shift they are walking, for his part Will is off to his second job at a Halloween store. As they walk he spots the hearse and is distracted by it. His boss at the store is a dick. However, there is something good there in the form of co-worker Rosemary (Arina Bacigalupo). She gives him a lift home and asks him on a date. Home life is weird; he lives with his Nana (Marnie L Hall) but she has a young lover, Greg (Justin C. Schilling). Lavash and Sid are coming over but he runs out on them determined to buy the hearse.

Will and Rosemary
He crosses a bridge, where a blind man seems to sit vigil, and goes to the couple who are selling the hearse. The man is creepy, but his wife comes out and essentially offers him the hearse for $400. When he has left it is clear that it is a set up and they refer to the hearse like a living being. He doesn’t have $400 and so convinces Sid to loan him the money as an investment – Will suggests he will convert the hearse into a limo as a business venture.

vampire breath
So, the car is a vampire and starts whispering to him, making him offers. The car is described as hungry and when we get the backstory it consists of a funeral home director who was part of a cult that fed the hearse the blood of the dead, but it wasn’t enough and she insisted on fresh blood. She is able to somehow possess Will, which gives him long talons, red eyes and a maw full of fangs. When he attacks a victim he expels breath into them, which seems to sedate them. Later he will say he thinks he drank blood, which he did, and a cult member says “How do you think we feed her?” This suggests that she consumes blood through a possessed servant. I’d have liked to have seen the hearse become pristine as it gained blood but it remained as is, and I suspect that was a budget thing.

Vamp face
The film has a neat idea – though some of the lore such as the breath and the symbiosis between car and servant are under-explored. Unfortunately it isn’t sure what it wants to be. It feels like it pulls its punches when it comes to horror and much more atmosphere and tension could have been explored. This may be because it styles itself as a comedy too, but that fell flat for me. There are pregnant pauses and awkward silences in scenes between the actors, as though they are waiting for direction and, to me, it really felt like it could do with tightening up. Not terrible, just shy of what it might have been. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Director: Guido Tölke

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Horror, vampires and pentathlon – it seems a strange mix and yet here we are. I say vampires, in truth we are really in the bailiwick of Erzsébet Báthory, but the filmmakers changed the name to Badesky – why is not too clear and they kept the basic outline of her story. It has an interesting lore idea in it but several stumbling blocks as we will see.

It starts with a woman emerging from a lake, she has a gun but drops the bullets from it… Elsewhere there is a hunting party looking for stag. Marcia Lorenz (Julia Dordel) is acting as a hunting guide to Matheus King (John Keogh). She is an ex-pentathlete, though I am not sure she ever says that outright, it just becomes evident, and is injured, causing a limp. He takes a shot at a stag, feels pain in his arm (recoil you might assume, but no) and falls over a tree stump.

Julia Dordel as Marcia
She helps him up, but he has dropped an envelope that is wax sealed. She picks it up and he snatches it back – extolling the fact that it is worth a small fortune. They continue and he spots a doe, he takes aim and she pushes his rifle as it is not doe season. As it is, he wings it and she says to follow – he rejects the idea as the adrenalin will spoil the meat (we return to that idea later). He gives her a revolver but refuses to come. She finds the doe but another guide gives it a mercy killing and asks what she has done – getting back to the hunting lodge, King has had a heart attack whilst on his own and, having been found by another guide, has been taken to hospital.

narrow escape
Marcia is sacked without pay for leaving her client – she needed the pay to put towards an operation to fix her leg. She steals King’s abandoned jacket – with the envelope – and leaves. Whilst driving on a road through the forest, a woman (the one from the lake) runs into the road and Marcia hits her – but the woman is alive and urges her to drive them away. Suddenly a bad (and when I say bad, I’m sorry, but the best descriptor is “piss poor”) cgi creature chases them and is able to catch the car. Marcia breaks, throwing it off, lightning strikes a tree that falls across the road/creature, she reverses and crashes. The woman is pulled from the car (wearing King’s jacket) and then Marcia is attacked. She eventually loses the creature by jumping across the path of a steam train, that hits it.

the castle
She gets the cops, who come in the form of George Balough (Anne Alexander-Sieder), and she doesn’t believe Marcia's story (or maybe George is covering events up). The axel is broken and she ends up selling her car for the money for a train ticket (a train that drops off two women in sports training gear) but ends up not leaving and then she is in and out of peril, finds the first woman on a meathook, meets Josh (Nicolo Pasetti, The Last Voyage of the Demeter) a handsome hunting lodge caretaker/eel fisherman and is embroiled in a supernatural tale…

lore book
So, roughly, what is going on? Countess Badesky and her four acolytes become vampires but were trapped on the land by the church and a curse. The curse was enacted by being tricked into signing compacts and coincidentally the envelope Marcia stole just so happens to contain those compacts, which they need to escape. Bathory discovered that human flesh, stressed and then eaten, extends life and bathing in/drinking blood restores youth. As there are no military conflicts round the property to cause the flesh of victims to be stressed, they sponsor and then invite pentathletes and hunt them. The pentathlete aspect was odd, but I liked the different properties of flesh and blood for the vampires.

the countess
Beyond the bad cgi – some of the practical effects are good, but the cgi, oh brother… - there are more issues with the film, and the biggest one was unlikely coincidence… King happens to have stolen the compacts, and happens to have them on him whilst hunting, and happens to have a heart attack, and Marcia happens to steal them (unaware of what they are), and happens to have an accident on the Badesky’s land, and happens to become embroiled, and happens to be a pentathlete, and happens to be able to find Badesky’s sigil online having seen it in a dimly lit cellar for seconds, and King’s driver happens to be the woman Marcia accidentally injured in training (King and she come into it again later on, and though there is a flimsy reasoning to how he found Marcia, it didn’t add up). It is really unbelievable as a string of coincidence.

blood spattered
The dialogue is a little hokey – though the actors try their best with it – but the length of the film (over 2-hours) outstays its welcome and could do with some generous pruning. The vampires are truly immortal, it would seem, and we end up getting some The Thing-like body horror towards the end. The twist, which revealed the Countess’ fourth acolyte, was broadcast early on and came as no surprise. An interesting idea around the vampirism, and interesting to merge horror and pentathlon. But a victim of its own hubris. 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Blood Craving is an extra on the Blu-Ray of Date With a Vampire and is a short film by Jeffrey Arsenault but is a bit of an oddity that I’ll date to 2002 (per IMDb). Arsenault directed the film Night Owl and if you look at my review of that film I mention: “I understand that the film was reissued in 2003 as Blood Craving and that a wraparound was added showing some new vampires and some chained victims as well as some extra explanation as to the fate of Angel – but I also understand it was new digitally shot footage that hardly fit in with the grainy aesthetics of the original movie.”

This short seems to be that additional footage (mostly) packaged together as a film in its own right. The IMDb page clearly references the edited version of Night Owl, this short is 29-minutes long and the listing on IMDb says 1 hour 15 minutes (still shorter than Night Owl’s 1 hour and 17 minutes, suggesting that the edit lost footage as well as gaining it). I say this is mostly additional footage as the interview with Caroline Munro is recycled into this (and is as much a strange addition as it was in the previous film as it is literally an interview with the actress). The short is shot in (rather washed out) colour, rather than black and white, and the Munro footage is in colour rather than black and white as it was in Night Owl.

Tiffany Helland as Jilian
As a short it really doesn’t make a huge amount of sense – a story regarding some form of disease impacting younger vampires, with Jillian (Tiffany Helland) sexually luring men to drain them of blood that she’ll feed to Angel (Israel Monrroy) – handcuffed for his own safety and presumably impacted by whatever is affecting younger vampires. Angel, as mentioned above, was a character in Night Owl – though it is a different actor playing the character. An oddity at best.

The imdb page (for the feature length release) is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

Author: Darin S Cape

Art: Felipe Kroll

First Published: 2026 (tpb)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: A blood-soaked mashup of vampire myth, rock history, and the counterculture of the late 1960s

Woodstake is a wickedly clever spin on the Dracula legend, reimagined against the backdrop of the iconic Woodstock festival of 1969. When a vampire descends on the summer of love, a generation of hippies is forced to survive three days of peace, music, and blood in this darkly funny, genre-bending thrill ride. A razor-sharp blend of satire, horror, and '60s nostalgia, Woodstake offers a wildly original story brought vividly to life through the bold, evocative artwork of Felipe Kroll. It is a must-read for fans of classic rock, genre mashups, and blood-soaked storytelling.

With its unique blend of Woodstock-era atmosphere and vampire horror, Woodstake stands out as a wild, cult-horror crossover that feels both nostalgic and fiercely original. This gripping graphic novel delivers a character-driven narrative paired with a bold visual style that brings the late '60s to life, complete with period-authentic detail, psychedelic flair, and sharp dark humor. Ideal for readers of horror comics, supernatural thrillers, and music history, Woodstake bridges genres in a way that is fresh, immersive, and unforgettable.


The review: Woodstock had been and gone before I was born and yet, after discovering the movie (as an aside, which is seen briefly in the Omega Man) and soundtrack as a teen, there is something about it that plays in my heart, a view of a moment where the future genuinely seemed bright. To merge that in with vampires, which obviously are a firm favourite for me, is a stroke of genius (even if the title is a touch on the nose). Woodstock invokes a bright moment, the vampire a moment of rot and decay in that idealised moment, an evil to be fought.

The opening of the story, however, goes back to 1927 and the awakening of an evil from the Old World. Weak he uses persuasion to draw prey to him, starting with a squirrel. The nature of the creature is revealed when he makes the squirrel bow before him before he takes it. A moment of ego and elitism. He grows in strength slowly but begins to get his powers back and then finds a hunter and feeds on human blood. The vampire’s strengths and weaknesses are pretty much textbook, with shape shifting, mental dominance, a need to sleep in native soil (he has boxes around the area), religious items are apotropaic, sunlight and stakes destroy. He turns his attention to a young woman, Lucy, but luckily Marius Van Helsing, town doctor, recognises the signs though too late for her. They track her and the vampire down and give her peace but the vampire escapes and goes to ground. Van Helsing changes the family name. The vampire remerges in 1969…

The graphic from this point is steeped in late 1960s counter-culture, music permeates the experience (you could really pull a playlist together to listen to as you read). The son of Van Helsing is the doctor in the area (he had been present as a youngster during the events) and the sheriff is the son of the sheriff present during Lucy’s story (though he is unaware of what occurred). It is quite telling that the sheriff has his will dominated and is forced to be the daylight servant. With the thousands attending the festival, the vampire is able to spread his disease, but a few understand and fight back…

Let me talk art for a moment. The story follows familiar genre rhythms, perhaps, but well told enough to warrant the entrance fee with the setting being fabulous, but the art would be reason to get this alone. Absolutely gorgeous throughout, with a vibrant colour scheme. This one is recommended, 8.5 out of 10.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Director: Robert Dean III

Release date: 2025

Contains spoilers

According to Wiktionary a snow bunny is “An inexperienced, usually female skier”, but it can also mean “A white woman who pursues sexual relationships with black men.” We are definitely within the latter definition with this film. It is a film that embeds itself deeply into urban language, and works this well as the main two characters come across well. It is, however, perhaps too simplistic in plot and execution.

fangs
It starts with viral internet star ThatBoyFunny (himself) in a house, trying doors that are locked and clearly fleeing for his life. The scene is filmed with a blue filter and we see the female figure stalking him has rows of fang-like teeth. She gets him and goes in for the kill. Elsewhere, Kevin (Richard Washington) is trying to watch TV but his girlfriend wants to talk… He has no job (he’s just got out of jail), his car has been in the shop for what feels like forever, and he is basically mooching. She breaks up with him and allows him one more night in the apartment.

Kevin and AJ
The next day his friend AJ (Rayvon McKay) was meant to be picking him up but decided he was too busy with a lady. AJ is the bad influence in his life, dropping out of college was down to AJ as was his jail time. AJ offers to get him a job… which turns out to be at the pizza parlour he works at. There Kevin meets Butta (Fats Da Barber) and he gets dragged along with Butta and AJ when they go to a strip joint.

at the pizza joint
At the club he is miserable; he has no money and doesn’t want to be there. However AJ and Butta have lots of money. They explain that a group of women had given them the money after they bought them shots. Kevin tries to return the money but the women insist its ok. There are five of them and they are having a whale of a time, giving the dancers money themselves. They all end up partying. The following day two of the women, Autumn (Delaney Roberts) and Heather (Gem Jewels), find Kevin and AJ at the pizza parlour and invite them to a dinner party.

the sisters
Of course they go, though Kevin has reservations. Those reservations are not eased when, on arrival, the menu for the dinner party seems awfully stereotyped (including fried chicken and watermelon). When there they discover that three more black men are also there for the meal, Walt (Stephen Wesley Green), Nick (Shaquan Parson) and Tim (Earrien Freeman), and they also find Bethany (Veronica Baldwin), Rachael (Summer Lopez) and Bridget (Jatiana Smith) there. The five are described as sisters, one wears ThatBoyFunny’s pendant and chain, which Kevin recognises as the disappearance has made the news.

Christopher Riley as Mr Black 
They also meet their father, Mr Black (Christopher 'White Dolemite' Riley). Walt is taken to a bedroom by Rachael and fellatio turns into biting his bits off… Kevin walks in on this but downstairs no one believes him until she reappears still fanged and spattered with blood. Luckily Nick grabs a sword and manages to behead her. We discover that it was the sword that killed Mr Black’s wife and one of his daughters because it is copper (leading to a scene with fake chains that are copper not gold and a fourth wall break that has on-screen subtitles to Bethany’s sign language that Kevin and AJ see).

blood at mouth
The other lore we get is that Mr Black is a feeder and his daughters are vampires who need melanin that they get by eating the flesh of black men, but they like to play with their food. The hunt through the house is too short and could have had much more done with it. Indeed the film is just over 1-hour and, whilst not outstaying its welcome (especially as part of the runtime is a blooper reel), in this case it desperately needed more time dedicated to the vampires hunting them and consequential tension that could have been built. This goes doubly so as the actors managed to make AJ and Kevin enjoyable characters, if morally and personality-wise they were also flawed. This really had potential, I think they squandered it and so hold this at 4 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

Director: Pedro Kos

Release date: 2024

Contains spoilers

Sorry – this is one of those films where the twist is vampirism and, with a couple of clues, they manage to keep that pretty much under wraps. However, as a vampire film, it does deserve to be here at TMtV – so that twist is spoiled. There are other twists in the tale, however, so not all is lost.

The film is in a documentary cut found footage style and as director Pedro Kos is a documentary filmmaker he has an eye for that and males the film work in that regard. It follows Emily (Brittany O'Grady), a documentary filmmaker, and her new employee Danny (E.J. Bonilla) as they travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico. Before we take the trip we see Emily talking to camera, holding a strangely designed key that she wears around her neck (later we see she finds the key).

E.J. Bonilla as Danny
The opening journey allows us to build some rapport with the two characters. Emily has had a contact from her estranged mother Sam (Alanna Ubach), a(n apparently) recovered junky, who used to use Emily to steal from clinics as a child and who wants to atone for her past. Emily has decided to make a documentary of their reconciliation. Danny, we discover as they drive, has a sweet tooth and a real eye for photography – and I have to say the professional looking filming makes this a cut above many found footage films, which can be shorthand for 'inability to frame a shot' at times. We discover later about Danny’s past with gangs and his struggle out of them (he’s having his gang tattoos removed over time).

dinner
They eventually get to Las Cruces and meet with Sam who seems both very nervous and regretful. They sit down for dinner and then interview her but the interview leads to some upset on Sam's part, intensified by the discovery that one of her friends had gone missing and then, a short while later, was found dead. Sam is volunteering at a clinic to try and make up for the past and invites Emily there the next day. The pair retire to their rather grungy motel. In the morning Emily can’t get hold of Sam and so they go to the clinic, where they are immediately told to stop filing (they do not). But Emily eventually manages to charm clinic director Ana (Krisha Fairchild) and they interview her and some of the homeless who live out the back of the clinic.

a vampire
Sam is still nowhere to be found and there feels like some connection to a gang connected to the cartels. The gang is blamed for putting a bloody pig’s head in their motel and, strangely, the aftermath of that is the rat’s that were eating died and it is confirmed as rat poison… So vampires (and spoilers)… yes vampires are involved as is the trafficking of blood from the itinerant, addicted and other victims who won’t be missed. The vampires are very much in the vampire as addicted mode, with it being said that blood is food for them, but human blood is a drug and they are strongly addicted. There is a hunter involved and the pig’s heads are left by them, covered in human blood to draw the vampires and laced with rat poison to slow them down.

[image error] Brittany O'Grady as Emily
I don’t want to spoil the other mysteries at the heart of this and, for me, the biggest strength was the photography. The cast work well but there were some aspects to the whodunnit side that seemed a tad convenient given the reveals at the end. Nevertheless, this worked well and captured the documentary aspect well – clearly because Pedro Kos is very au fait with his craft. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US