3.5/5
Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
Benny, played by Jorge Lendeborg Jr, finds himself in the middle of a vampire turf war after he covers his brother’s, played by Raul Castillo, shift as a driver.
I enjoyed this film and thought that it had enough uniqueness to it that it stands out within the vampire sub-genre. It is very stylised and this again helps to give it flair with an almost comic book esque aesthetic, the action again reflects this with a lot of the big fight scenes feeling straight from the page.
Lendeborg Jr is a fine leading man, but he is greatly outdone by Debbie Ryan as Blair, one of the two vampires being driven around. Lendeborg Jr and Ryan have an undeniable amount of chemistry together on screen and their romance is very believable. Moreover, Ryan’s character is also the most complex with her being this killing machine but also longing for more, with the idea that she has been forced or conditioned into this life never too far from the viewers mind.
The two areas where I felt the film was lacking was its villain and its originality. In terms of villain we have Alfie Allen as victor the big bad vampire boss who is making a play for the whole city, now the issue with Allen’s character is that we really aren’t shown him doing very much yet we are expected to believe he is a threat. This becomes a big issue when you get to the final part of the film where he is supposedly super powerful and unbeatable yet we hadn’t got a whiff of that before as it is not well set up. Moreover, in terms of originality, though I said the film is fairly unique it is also quite reliant on past tropes which serve as a disservice to it.
Overall, a strong vampire film that benefits from casting Debby Ryan.
Pros.
Ryan
The romance
Some interesting new ideas
Cons.
A little too reliant on tropes
Alife Allen is wasted
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Another Millennial Reviewer 