Byzantium

Byzantium sees Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan play 200-year-old vampires in director Neil Jordan's slow, bloodsucking, modern gothic thriller lacking in bite.

This is meant both literally and figuratively. Not a fang in sight - just immaculately pointy thumbnails, which sharpen and lengthen at the sight of blood or sexual encounter.

Constantly moving from one depressing, run-down coastal town to another, single mum vampire, Clara (Arteton), supports her daughter, Eleanor (Ronan), by the only way she knows how - working as a prostitute in sleazy establishments and living on the worst council estates the UK has to offer.

Immediately questioning this drab existence (let's face it, a couple of centuries is long enough, even for the slowest of learners, to work on their self-worth issues and master a different set of transferable work skills to improve one's chances of finding a better paid, legitimate career) we learn the reason for this enforced living-in-the-shadows lifestyle is to dodge the sexist vampire brotherhood, who believe female biters are an abomination to the species and must be eradicated.

After Clara garrotes a mysterious agent that managed to track her down, mother and daughter make a hasty exit, but not before setting their squalid flat on fire with the beheaded corpse inside. Ending up in another seaside location with a dilapidated pier, their luck looks to seemingly improve as they set themselves up in a disused boarding house called Byzantium, with Noel (Daniel Mays), who's inherited the place after the death of his mother. But of course, it doesn't, and it’s during their stay here, where everything unravels and comes to a head without any real dramatic tension whatsoever.

Overall disappointing for the most part, however, Gemma Arteton fans will no doubt enjoy watching her delectable, gravity-defying figure endlessly sprinting in her underwear.