Vampires – Review

Vampires is a slow-burn movie.

Initial reactions to the mockumentary on vampires, isn’t anything we haven’t seen on any reality show on E! Entertainment Channel, despite its satrical vibe. There’s little action, just drama. The woeful eternal (or is it internal) struggle of immortality is a thread line often seen in vampire movies. Vampires adds little to the genre, nearly a 100 years old, which started in deft horror in Nosferatu and has seen itself self go all emo in Twilight. The mockumentary aspect isn’t new, but thankfully not “found footage”, but it’s not as funny or smart as This is Spinal Tap and Man Bites Dog, films it desperately wants to be.

A documentary crew has been trying, rather unsuccessfully, to film this vampire sub-culture in the underbelly of Belgium. After a two crews met an untimely death, the researchers finally met a family willing to go all Kardashian. This family has issues. Once the rules and regal aspects of their culture is revealed, the family drama ensues. Forbidden lust, teen suicide, and yearning to be human again are the narrative strands we follow. Vampires is a black comedy, so like my opening line suggests, it’s slow-burn. Director Vincent Lannoo probably has created a little cult film, although due to the lack of any real punch like another Belgian mockumentary in Man Bites Dog, it’s rather one-note.

While Lannoo certainly has a flair for some winks and dark humor like the vampire daughter who loves pink and tries to “die like a human”. As interesting as he tries to present the vampire culture, it’s hardly new or fresh. Granted, we don’t always need new or fresh, and these teen drama of recent vampire movies have almost sucked the undead life out of this genre, Vampires seems like a coda to the genre, more than a truly riveting expose it thinks it is.

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