Life Blood

The vampire genre is becoming increasingly congested with everyone desperate to recreate the success and ride the coat tails of the huge Twilight Sage and the Swedish gem Let The Right One In. Some film makers are opting for direct carbon copies, or even remakes, some are making spoofs and others, just a few, are attempting to come up with something original.

Or in this case a mess of a movie.

Ron Carlson, writer and director, opens this yarn on New Years Eve in 1969 as we follow a lesbian couple at a party welcoming in the 1970's. One grisly murder later and we are on the run in the middle of nowhere and then the films get a supernatural injection. The two lesbians are visited by what I assume was God (a woman of course, who feels the need to kiss one of the lesbians). Then we are in the present day in the company of a pair of lesbian vampires. The the middle part of the film is a siege scenario in a gas station as the pair wait for night fall with plenty of the expected bloodshed.

The plot is obviously going to be a bit far fetched, it is a vampire film after all, but I quite fancied it making some sense and perhaps even giving some reason as to what is happening. God's appearance is never really explained, nor is the reason why making them vampires will help rid the world of evil. Surely, if anyone is going to realise it's a bad idea, it's God.

This nonsense of a plot is supplemented by a host of supporting cast that are there either to make us laugh or get eaten, or both. Very seldom to they manage the former, if at all. In fact I think the only chuckle I managed is because I recognised the midget policeman as Mickey from Seinfeld.

Among all of these negatives though, there are one or two positives. The opening segment, in 1969, is very stylishly shot, all be it a bit Tarantino, but there is enough there to suggest that Ron Carlson knows what he's doing and could have a bit of potential. It also boast a good soundtrack in the early stages.

I'm sure there's a good idea in there somewhere about God choosing a modern fallible hero to save the world, or even a allegorical story about breaking up a relationship that you know it's bad for you, but the set up is dull and in such a state that it all gets lost. Plus Carlson seems so obsessed with lesbians, to the extent that God walks around with her nipples out and snogs other women to transfer powers, that you can't help but feel that this is all rather juvenile. These good intentions also detract from it being a standard horror film, it can't even manage that.

In fact, the most terrifying thing is that an anti-climatic ending hints at a sequel.