Lifeblood

Yeah, this was a little closer to what I was expecting from this set. Here we get a vampire movie that combines all the worst nonsense of the Gothic overelaborate borderline porn that has infested vampire movies for decades with a budget that’s so nonexistent that rather than trying to turn into bats or anything, the vamps will just run away on foot from their enemies. Worst of all, despite the filmmakers knowing that they’re making a piece of shit (and come on, they had to know), they hardly attempted to put the slightest bit of humor into it at all, which would have at least made it somewhat watchable.

To be fair, there is some amusement to be had from both the atrocious dialogue and the atrocious acting, particularly the latter. For instance, at one point a vampire walks in on a group of girls doing lines of cocaine. One girl looks up and in a dull monotone says, “oh shit, you’re one of them,” before snorting another line. Earlier a female vamp is trying to, I guess seduce, a human girl before feeding on her. She asks her “are you nervous,” then the instant the girl is done saying her line she immediately goes on with “you smell nice,” then just sits there waiting for her cue before asking “has anyone ever touched you like this before?” This is why it’s not always the best idea to fill a cast out with your friends and family. In a similar vein, even if you want to support your friend’s band, grinding your movie to a halt when you’re not even twenty minutes into it so that they can play an entire song in a club is not the best possible use of your running time.

The film fails on just about every level. The dialogue is lame, the acting is worse, the editing is curiously choppy (there are a couple instances where people giving speeches are cut off mid-sentence as the film abruptly jumps forward to later in their speech with no reason at all), and a great many of the outdoors scenes are so dark that it’s virtually impossible to see what’s going on. When my favorite part of the film comes from the main character looking like a dead ringer for Louis C.K., the film has some serious problems. Writer-director Steven Niles may want to consider finding another field of employment, or at least consider revising past the rough draft phase of his next script.

Rating: ½ *