Vampire/Gothic

dirs: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet

2024

Abigail is a ‘perfect’ action-y horror-ish flick to watch on a Saturday night after the better part of a six-pack has been consumed. For some people a six-pack will have them giggling like idiots, and for others a six-pack consumed means you’re barely getting started.

I’m not here to argue the merits of alcoholism and such, but I will make the (weak) case for Abigail being a reasonably well done movie of whatever genre it is.

I think it’s impossible to spoil a movie whose poster and ads spoil everything to do with the so-called movie. I’ve seen ads on tv, and if audiences didn’t figure out from that what was going on, they’re probably still going to be confused after they watch the flick.

“wait, so, she’s a mermaid?” they’ll probably ask the person next to them, tapping them on the shoulder, who will recoil and growl “don’t touch me, nothing gives you that right!”

A bunch of professional crims are enlisted for a job. They don’t know each other, but they are competent and do what needs to be done, not knowing until the last moments that they’ve been enlisted to kidnap a young girl who dresses as a ballerina.

She is the Abigail of the title (Alisha Weir). One of the crims, later to be dubbed Joey (Melissa Barrera) enquires as to her wellbeing, and promises her, despite all appearances to the contrary, that she won’t let anything bad happen to Abigail, well, anything worse than being kidnapped and chained up.

Abigail apologises to Joey for everything that’s about to happen.

Hmm. Does she know something that we don’t?

Well, the whole movie is named after her, so she probably is in the know.

The guy that hired them, Lambert (Giancarlo Esposito, wasted in a thankless role), tells them not to tell each other any personal details, so he gives all six of the crims names from the Rat Pack, which turns out to be so pointless. I mean, wonderful history lesson for the kids, but…

dir: Daniel Espinosa

2022

Another week, another Marvel related extrusion from the Play Do factory.

If you’re wondering how or why this relates to anything to do with Marvel, it’s of the “very stupid” section of their back catalogue, the one that produces those terrible Venom movies; of characters no-one really cares about getting their own films played by people who know better but do panto during the summer break for extra money.

This, however, doesn’t it feel like it wants to or needs to even be anything vaguely connected to Marvel: it’s a dumb and generic vampire movie about a guy who turns himself into a vampire and fights another guy who’s a vampire and then kills that guy and it’s mostly done.

The end. No more to see here. Let’s hope.

What’s almost funny is that this doctor (Jared Leto, ugh) finds these bats, and decides to take their DNA, and put it in himself, and then he becomes like a bat, um, man? There’s even a scene where he stands in a circular glass chamber and the bats fly all around him, and there’s this Hans Zimmer music that sounds awfully like... that other film where a guy has an affinity for bats, and even dresses like one?

This flick is terrible, but not in enjoyable ways, just in generic ways. It’s not particularly horrible to watch, it’s just not that entertaining. Jared Leto speaks with an accent not of this earth, and yet he’s not playing an alien. Watching him simulate what he thinks is human behaviour is almost touching sometimes. It’s like watching a dog play the piano. He gets the idea of human interaction without the specifics that would make it seem like realistic human behaviour.

dirs: Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi

2014

From the very start, as the logo for the New Zealand Documentary Board makes its scratched and dusty way onto the screen, we know we’re in for a real low rent experience.

Well, it would have to be. At this stage of the game, a film about vampires has to be doing something extraordinary in order to be worthy of our interest. Surely we had reached vampire saturation even before the Twilight movies drove a poorly acted stake through the genre?

Well, instead of an extraordinary take on the genre, what we have here is an extremely ordinary take on the genre.

Not typified solely by its low budget, which perhaps enhances rather than detracts from the experience, at least in theory, What We Do In the Shadows depicts these creatures of the night as the complete antithesis of the charismatic and highly fuckable vampires that we’re more used to.

These vampires live in a filthy sharehouse, they speak in heavy Transylvanian by way of Kiwi accents, and they live in that renowned haven of the undead, Wellington, New Zealand.

dir: Tim Burton

And this is what home video was invented for. You know, watching stuff on VHS or even Betamax tapes in your lounge room. No, I don’t mean porno. Well, maybe on laser disc or DVD. Definitely not Blu-Ray.

This is an artefact not just from the 60s, but from a time when we expected nothing more than to be entertained by something no matter how ludicrous it might be. Tim Burton may just be the most successful B movie director in the history of American cinema. I can't think of the last time or the first time he made something genuine, heartfelt and 'real', whatever that might be. He's happier with completely melodramatic fantasy, and who can blame him?

Johnny Depp certainly can't, which is just one of the many reasons why he's not only on board as the lead here, but also as one of the producers. I have no idea why Tim Burton and Depp thought making this would be profitable, successful or desirable to anyone else but themselves. But that's only because I know absolutely nothing about the show this is based on, other than it was a supernatural soap opera in the 1960s. Called Dark Shadows. That was probably even sillier than this.