First Things First…
They gave away the whole premise for this movie in the trailer, including the big reveal. I don’t know how early in the movie that happens, but I can’t help but think they should have saved it. Then again, you really wouldn’t know what you were getting yourself into if they had.
3 Things I Like
3. Abigail the Mastermind
If you know the main twist that’s coming, which I hinted at above—that Abigail is a vampire—then you know as soon as she’s taken, crying and pleading, she’s not really helpless. She’s just acting.
Still, I didn’t suspect she was the mastermind behind her own kidnapping, and that it’s all a trap, with each of the kidnappers targeted for having crossed her father’s organization in some way. And I didn’t figure out Lambert is doing her bidding.
Abigail mentions being centuries old, which makes it easier to buy that, despite looking like a kid, she’s clever enough to pull off such an elaborate ruse. And it’s also easy to believe she’s bored enough to just do this for fun.
As much as I wish the main twist wasn’t given away in the trailer, and that I could’ve come into this totally blind, I was happy to see the movie has other surprises up its sleeve.
2. Murder House
I loved the house as soon as the group got there, before I even knew it was a trap. It’s a great blend of decrepit and modern. It seems to have hidden turns and passageways everywhere.
There’s a gross swimming pool overflowing with corpses. Frankly, it just has an ominous feel as soon as they arrive
1. Two Quick Kills, Then We Have a Crew
“Sammy, those are fuckin’ onions!”
Frank
The crew gets picked off one by one. That was inevitable. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it done quite like this.
As things start turning to shit in the house, before they know Abigail is a vampire, we lose the wheelman, Dean. (RIP Angus Cloud, who died before the movie came out.) Not long after that, Don Rickles, the ex-military man, bites the bullet.
Once those two are killed, and it’s been established just how deadly the stakes are in this house, the rest of the crew don’t just die off in quick succession. We get a large chunk of the movie with Joey, Frank, Sammie, and Peter. It’s a fun dynamic as they get to know each other while trying to figure a way out of this situation.
One of the highlights is that Frank hates everybody and everybody hates Frank.
Then there’s Sammie, a moron who grabs a bag of onions and thinks they’re garlic.
Peter is the muscle but is mentally a bit stunted. He’s sweet but will sell out anyone on a dime.
And Joey is the main character, the caretaker who shows kindness toward Abigail.
She’s a recovering drug addict desperately trying to stay clean in a terrible situation so she can go back to her son.
While none of these performances are going to win Oscars, they’re all fun. I like all four actors. They make this a movie that I enjoyed from beginning to end, even when there’s some stupidity along the way.
0 Things I’m Mixed On
4 Things I Don’t Like
4. Joey and Don Rickles’ Sexual Tension
Where does this come from? When Joey does her cold reading parlor trick, she and Rickles barely talk. Then, when he’s upstairs setting up a sniper rifle, they bump into each other in the hallway, and suddenly they trust each other but no one else. And it sure seems they’d like to sleep with each other, but they’re both too professional to do so while on a job.
I almost thought maybe they knew each other outside of this crew, that’s how familiar they suddenly are with one another. There’s nothing wrong with that, and they have decent enough chemistry. But it took me out of the movie because the way they interact privately is a 180 from the way they were in front of the group, when they barely acknowledged one another.
3. Just a Flesh Wound
Way before he gets turned, Frank takes a wooden stake—carved out of a pool cue—through the leg. Like, all the way through. And yeah, he’s in pain. But after the stake is removed, they just wrap up the wound with a tourniquet like it’s not a big deal, and he’s walking around on it with barely a limp. It’s impossible not to notice how unrealistic this is.
2. Unbecoming Mercy
When we finally meet Abigail’s father, Kristoff, at the end, it seems Abigail wasn’t exaggerating about her poor relationship with him. Yet, he lets Joey leave because Abigail said so. It seems like the type of mercy he’d never really show.
I was kind of hoping we wouldn’t meet Kristoff at all. That could set up a sequel where he hunts down Joey and her son, and Abigail works with them.
1. Frank Overpowers Abigail
“What are we talking about, like an Anne Rice or a True Blood? You know Twilight? Very different kind of vampires.”
Sammie
As Sammie helpfully points out, vampire lore changes from story to story. Here, the crew finds out the hard way that crucifixes and garlic don’t hurt them, but sunlight does.
We don’t learn a whole lot of lore besides that. But one thing stuck out as wrong…
Abigail has been a vampire for centuries. So despite her 12-year-old body, I would think she’d be much more powerful than Frank, who was just turned a couple of minutes ago. Yet, he overpowers her right away. It’s so bad, in fact, that Abigail even asks Joey for help because she admits she’s not strong enough to take him herself.
It makes sense to power Frank up when he becomes the villain and Abigail kinda backs out of that role. But it still seems wrong, based on having seen so many vampire movies and shows. I wish they would’ve at least come up with some sort of explanation as to why Frank is so powerful so fast.
Tim Matassa
