"Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold. I'm not a big horror fan, but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.
Vampires vs The Bronx - 2020, d. Oz Rodriguez - Netflix
Vamps - 2012, d. Amy Heckerling - AmazonPrime
Halloween - 2018, d. David Gordon Green - Crave
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As you can tell by that first paragraph wherein I referenced a bunch of other movies and shows, this isn't totally original, but it wears those inspirations on its sleeve. It's not reinventing the vampire story, it's just playing, gently, in that world. The film gets points for playing with theme of gentrification and how it changes a neighbourhood. That vampires - white vampires, no less - are the ones gentrifying against an otherwise very multicultural cast, it has some heightened concerns for its protagonists that extend beyond just the undead feeding on the living. Gentrification isn't exclusively a race thing, it's ostensibly a class struggle, and the film, while making a few points that are race-focussed, really hits at the class side of things. The poor tend to be forgotten, which is what the vamps are hoping for as they turn the Bronx into both a developing venture and a feeding ground.
The young actors in this film are terrific, very charismatic. The friendship of the three leads (Jaden Michaels, Gerald Jones III, and Gregory Diaz IV) isn't just believable but is actually what the film invests in even more than it's supernatural plot. That one friend is being swayed by a local gang into working for them causes as much strife in the film as the bloodsucking fiends on the loose. The film falls flat though in bringing Coco Jones' Rita into the mix. She's Michaels' unrequited object d'affection, but once she catches onto what the boys are up to she says the best line in the film: "We're Haitian... my grandmother's been preparing me for this, like, my entire life". And yet, when it comes down to it, she's sidelined going off to get help. In some ways, this film can't forget the 80's cliches its inherited for better and worse.
The supporting cast is pretty solid as well, includes Shea Wingham (honestly one of the busiest character actors in showbiz), Method Man, The Kid Mero (Desus and Mero), Jeremie Harris (Legion, Fargo), Chris Redd (Popstar, SNL), and Sarah Gadon (Letterkenny, True Detective). It's a pretty tight ship, it moves briskly, it's fun and entertaining, and, with the exception of a few flying effects at the end, it looks really good. I'm game for a sequel where the kids fight Werewolves or CHUDs or something.
But, we have to ask, is it horror?
Yes... ish. It is basically horror for tweens. It's a modern-day Monster Squad. The bad guys are only scary if you've never really seen vampires before.
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What We Do In The Shadows has basically
perfected the vampire comedy, but Vamps, coming a few years before the Taika Waititi film,
certainly tried to exploit vampire tropes paired with chick flick setups for a
laugh to no real success (it basically took in no box office and went
direct to video). I hadn't even heard of it until my wife mentioned something about it and the next day I flipped past it on AmazonPrime. I would like to think it's rare that something from a director as prominent as Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless) would get so buried but it's almost the story of her career (and most other women directors). That she's also reteaming with
he most notable lead Alicia Silverstone as wells as Sigourney Weaver no less in
a prominent supporting role makes it a kind of shocking, unbelievable discovery.
I'm certain with now famous Krysten
Ritter and Dan Stevens on the top of the logo this will get a definite
spike in eyes on the picture, but the problem is not its cast (which
also finds Wallace Shawn, Kristen Johnston, Richard Lewis, Malcolm
McDowell and Larry Wilmore rounding out some of the major supporting
roles).
It's so unfortunate then that it's just a campy, corny, sloppy comedy and an even worse romance.
Oh sure, Ritter and Stevens spark pretty hard but it's like Heckerling was learning about vampires as she was writing the script and kept throwing in details as they came. The world doesn't feel lived in, and the characters feel generally arbitrary. This is a PG movie (a beheading and all the rat-blood drinking probably pushes it to PG-13 but it's really toothless violence) that seems to think it's doing Sex and the City with vampires, but is more like Caroline in the City with vampires.
The tone for the film is camp, it doesn't take vampires seriously, so the jokes are, as Goody (Silverstone's character) would say, "so cornball". It's not that camp can't be entertaining, and there are moments of that here. As well, somehow, most of the players manage to rise above the material, but at times it also seems like each scene only had one take before they had to move on, so the joke timing almost always seems off.
Had this been more specifically a horror-romcom, leaning into both genres, rather than a tepid light comedy it could have really been something.
Well, is it horror?
Not even in the slightest, unless you consider star-studded bad movies to be terrifying.
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| sweet poster from Bill Seinkiewicz |
I went through a Halloween phase about 20 years ago, watching through all the (rather terrible) spinoffs and continuations of the Michael Meyers saga. The first is an undeniable genre classic, the second a servicable follow-up, the third a curious non-sequitur, with the remainder all being different levels of dross. I skipped the Rob Zombie remake and sequel, because I don't really like horror enough to sit through a Rob Zombie movie.
But I really like the direction this sequel reboot took, making it a very personal
story for Laurie Strode (bravo Jamie Lee Curtis, such a better turn for Laurie than Halloween:H20!). If anything I wish we had spent
more time with the troubled Laurie and her even more troubled family
dynamics. We kind of got only a superficial taste of their trauma and
how it's manifested post '78.
Michael Myers is now old and grey but
still just a monstrous beast of a man, a ruthlessly efficient killing
machine, that still haunts the town despite his longtime incarceration.
Of course he finally gets loose, on Halloween no less, and things get
really bloody. The thing that I find a little silly is how much time he
has for misdirection (moving a body and stuffing it in a closet) or
intimidation (cutting eyeholes out of a bedsheet and putting it over a
dead body for someone to find). But that's genre tropes for you
I like the there are all these people fascinated with trying to figure him out, understand his psychology and motivations...and it gets them all killed. Every time the movie presents an opportunity for Michael to be understood, or perhaps even sympathetic towards someone, nope, it's just someone else who needs to die. It's only his connection to Laurie that really lingers, and it seems it isn't so much personal as it is unfinished business. It appears only little kids and babies are outside his threshold. I feel bad for that kid at the bus crash who just wanted to dance.
It's about as deftly handled sequel/reboot as has been done. It feels like Carpenter's classic but also feels modern, and also feels like the two fit together. It's far from flawless (it could have done so much more with Laurie's daughter, played by Judy Greer, and those podcasters at the start were kind of a waste of time, all said and done) but I enjoyed it a lot.
But, is it horror?
Yeah, it delivers the goods. Frights and kills aplenty. I liked the cutaway kills, the ones where either the camera drifts away or doesn't follow Michael, until after the deed is done. Gordon Green's direction is really sharp throughout, and doesn't get too cutesy or clever. The deaths we do see are supposed to have more impact by not cleanly seeing the less relevant ones.
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