vampire | the m0vie blog

New Escapist Column! On “Nightcrawler” as a Metaphorical Vampire Movie…

Posted on August 16, 2020 by Darren

I published a new piece at The Escapist earlier today. Nightcrawler is streaming on Netflix, so it seemed like a nice opportunity to revisit the film.

Nightcrawler is very obviously a loving homage to seventies American cinema, and a commentary on the scrambling at the margins of the post-recession economy. However, writer and director Dan Gilroy frames his story in such a way as to evoke classic vampire movies. At its core, Nightcrawler is the tale of a bloodthirsty parasite prowling the streets of Los Angeles at night, but there’s more to it than that. Nightcrawler is a biting satire and a gritty drama, but it also understands the horror of the situation that it depicts.

You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.

Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, horror movie, jake gylllenhaal, nightcrawler, nightmare, the escapist, vampire, vampire movie | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: From the Dark

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2015.

A large part of the joy of From the Dark is the way that the story translates its horror conventions to rural Ireland without breaking a sweat.

From the Dark is a very simple horror story that could be told anywhere. It is the standard story about a young couple who get lost in a remote location, discovering that their phones don’t work just as they stumble across some grotesque evil. It is a standard horror template, which feels particularly traditional once it becomes clear that the grotesque evil exposed by our two lead characters are very traditional vampires. However, director Conor McMahon does an excellent job executing all those traditional tropes against a very Irish backdrop.

A lot of the credit belongs to cinematographer Michael Lavelle who skilfully conveys the sense of rural Ireland as an isolated wilderness. From the Dark unfolds in Offaly, with Lavelle working hard to make the locality seem ethereal and haunted. Long grass sways in the wind, the sky lights up with beautiful colours at sunrise and sunset. From the Dark manages to expertly capture a sense of the countryside that is both breathtaking and alien. It seems like a world that is simultaneously magical and dangerous.

From the Dark is a rather efficient little thriller – one that moves along quite cleanly and efficiently. However, it is executed with a great deal of technical skill and proficiency, making for a satisfying old-school horror film.

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: film, from the dark, Movie, non-review review, review, vampire | 2 Comments »

The X-Files (Topps) #24 – Silver Lining (Review)

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Darren

This February and March, we’re taking a trip back in time to review the fourth season of The X-Files and the first season of Millennium.

After the wacky and delightful excess of Donor, John Rozum steers the comic back into much more traditional fare.

There is little in Silver Lining that the comic hasn’t touched on quite recently. Guest writer Kevin J. Anderson already wrote a “vampiric object” story about a killer camera the two-part Family Portrait story only a few months earlier. John Rozum had already drafted a “haunted object drives a man to kill, but the voices are only in his head” story for The Silent Blade, a short story written specifically for The X-Files Magazine. As a result, Silver Lining feels a little overly familiar. There is nothing here that the reader hasn’t seen before; and recently, too.

Fashioning a story…

Silver Lining reinforces the sense that Topps and Ten Thirteen are making a conscious effort to frame The X-Files as a classic horror comic book. Certainly, Silver Lining adopts the same basic storytelling elements associated with those pulpy adventures from the fifties; there is a scientist who unwittingly unleashes a horror upon the world, a physically deformed villain, a moral about how beauty is only skin deep and that vanity is called a “deadly” sin for a reason. There’s even a poetic justice to the story, where the guest villain finds themselves tormented in an ironic fashion.

There’s nothing particularly objectionable about Silver Lining, beyond how repetitive it feels. It feels like The X-Files has taken something of a step backwards since Topps and Ten Thirteen decided to part ways with writer Stefan Petrucha. The first sixteen issues of The X-Files felt like something of a Vertigo comic book, an ambitious horror anthology with no shortage of big ideas. Now the comic feels very much like an old E.C. comic without the nostalgia factor. The decline is quite striking, but no less disheartening for it.

Moral decay…

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Filed under: Comics, The X-Files | Tagged: cliche, Comics, ec comics, horror, irony, john rozum, Topps, twist, vampire, vampiric overcoat, x-files | Leave a comment »

Star Trek – Obsession (Review)

Posted on December 24, 2014 by Darren

The first Star Trek pilot, The Cage, was produced in 1964. To celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, this December we are reviewing the second season of the original Star Trek show. You can check out our first season reviews here. Check back daily for the latest review.

The Star Trek franchise really does like Moby Dick, doesn’t it?

The show had done its first appropriation of Herman Melville’s iconic story of obsession and revenge earlier in the second season with The Doomsday Machine. In that episode, Commodore Decker sought to avenge the loss of his crew upon an unstoppable planet-killing machine. However, the basic formula quickly worked its way into the franchise’s blood. Obsession casts Kirk in the role of Ahab, albeit with a radically different ending and tone. After all, it is very cast Ahab as the heroic lead of a weekly television show.

“It’s behind you!”

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan would return to Moby Dick for inspiration. Khan would even paraphrase from the book, without a hint of self-awareness or irony. After that point, it seemed like the franchise was more interested in mimicking the themes of The Wrath of Khan , which inevitably meant carrying over the themes of Moby Dick as well. Nevertheless, Star Trek: Voyager did its own variant of Moby Dick in Bliss and Star Trek: First Contact would reference the book directly.

Obsession is a competent if unspectacular episode, one that suffers from the fact that it has been done better and more compellingly in recent memory. However, given all the changes taking place behind the scenes, Obsession flows surprisingly well.

It really sucks to be a red shirt, eh?

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Filed under: The Original Series | Tagged: bloodbath, death, farragut, garrovick, gene roddenberry, kirk, leslie, lieutenant leslie, Moby Dick, obsession, ralph senensky, Ray Bradbury, red shirts, space vampire, space vampire cloud, star trek, star trek: the original series, the original series, tos, vampire, vampire cloud, William Shatner | 3 Comments »

My 12 for ’13: Stoker & A Vampire Story Without Vampire

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Darren

This is my annual countdown of the 12 movies that really stuck with me this year. It only counts the movies released in Ireland in 2013, so quite a few of this year’s Oscar contenders aren’t eligible, though some of last year’s are.

This is number 5…

Stoker is one of the most underrated gems of the year. Released early on, Chan-wook Park’s psychological horror easily gets lost in the shuffle. Which is a shame, because it’s a wonderfully disturbing little thriller, one crafted with an incredible eye for beauty. Even the name is somewhat appropriate, evoking the creator of the modern vampire story. Stoker is in essence a vampire movie made without a vampire, although Matthew Goode’s Uncle Charlie is a convenient stand-in.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Chan-wook Park, Charlie, dracula, film, india, Ireland, matthew goode, Mia Wasikowska, Stoker, vampire | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Byzantium

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Darren

Byzantium is visually stunning and thematically fascinating, a thoughtful and well-constructed vampire tale from the director of Interview with a Vampire. Neil Jordan’s latest bloodsucking epic might lack a narrative cohesion and take a while to get going, but it’s still an interesting exploration of the genre. Jordan has a wonderful skill for composition, and his flair ensures that the story of two ageless female vampires always looks breathtaking, even if the story does take a while to get going.

Talk about running red…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Bella Swan, Byzantium, Caleb Landry Jones, Clara, Eleanor, film, Gemma Arterton, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Jonny Lee Miller, Jordan, Katniss Everdeen, Moira Buffini, Movie, neil jordan, non-review review, review, saoirse ronan, twilight, vampire | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Stoker

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2013.

Stoker is, without spoiling anything, essentially a vampire movie without a vampire. It’s a psychological thriller with a decidedly charged sexual undercurrent. It’s also a story of the things we keep secret, the dangers of blood and unwholesome desires. Park Chan-wook does an excellent job adapting Wentworth Miller’s screenplay for film, and the result is a strange and macabre beauty, a film that is occasionally a little too ethereal for its own good, but remains compelling and uncomfortable viewing.

Shear terror…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: dracula, film, india, matthew goode, Mia Wasikowska, Movie, nicole kidman, non-review review, Park Chan, Park Chan-wook, review, Stoker, vampire, Wentworth Miller | 2 Comments »

American Vampire, Vol. 4 (Review)

Posted on October 29, 2012 by Darren

This October, to get us in the mood for Halloween, we’re taking a look at some awesome monster comics. Check back in every Monday this month for a review of Scott Snyder’s American Vampire Saga.

American Vampireis a wonderful vehicle for Scott Snyder to explore his obvious fascination with the social history of the United States. In this fourth volume of the series, Snyder brings the action into the fifties. The fifties time that seemed to be rife with great social change coming out of the Second World War. However, despite those origins, they would ultimately just serve as a prelude to the more dramatic social developments during the sixties. This collection of issues allows Snyder to hint on a number of familiar themes that fit quite well with the setting, including the conflict between old and new – something that has been at the heart of the series since the very beginning.

Grabbing the snake by the… whatever it is you grab snakes by…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: American Vampire, Death Race, elvis presley, Marv Wolfman, People, Protagonist, rafael albuquerque, Rock and roll, Scott Snyder, Severed, Skinner Sweet, Snyder, sweet, Tomb of Dracula, Travis, United States, vampire, Vampire Diaries | Leave a comment »

Tomb of Dracula Omnibus, Vol. II (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on October 17, 2012 by Darren

It’s fantastic that Marvel have gone to such pains to collect all of the classic seventies Tomb of Dracula. The main title is collected in the first of three volumes, with this second oversized hardcover rounding out Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan’s run on the on-going series. Indeed, with Colan’s consistent pencils and Wolfman’s long-form plotting, Tomb of Dracula feels remarkably close to a single long-form story, one massive epic in seventy-odd chapters, with ideas hinted and developed years before they would eventually pay off. As such, the collection holds up remarkably well, and is a joy to read. While the second half of the series might not be as solid as Wolfman and Colan’s work on the first thirty-odd issues, it still makes for a satisfying conclusion to this chapter of Dracula’s story.

Out for the Count?

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: boston, Bram Stoker, Brother Voodoo, Doctor Sun, dracula, england, france, gene colan, Harker, Harold H. Harold, history, Jonathan Harker, Marv Wolfman, Mina Harker, New England, Romania, silver surfer, Tomb of Dracula, Transylvania, vampire, wolfman | Leave a comment »

American Vampire, Vol. 2 (Review)

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Darren

What happens to those childhood monsters when there are no more shadows to hide in? Do they leave? Do they move on? Or do they simply learn to live in the light?

– Cashel McCogan pretty much sums up American Vampire

The more I read, the more I like Scott Snyder’s American Vampire. The author has proven himself quite adept when it comes to writing comic books, handling his short stint on Detective Comics with great skill and proving a worthy scribe for Swamp Thing. Outside the mainstream superhero books, Snyder has defined himself as one of the leading writers of comic book horror. He did an outstanding job on Severed, but his on-going American Vampire might be the finest work I have read from the writer.