Posts Tagged ‘vampires’

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0450405/

Dir. Paul Weitz

I ended up seeing this entirely at random and it was a waste of my time.

The film is a total and utter mess. It’s the story of Darren Shan (who is definitely not a self-insert for the author Darren O’Shaughnessy) a boy who is obsessed with spiders and his friend, Steve, who is obsessed with vampires. One night they go to a super-secret freakshow, which consists mostly of talented actors embarrassing themselves, and see a vampire, Mr Crepsley, perform with a deadly CGI spider. Once the show is over Steve insists that Mr Crepsley should turn him into a vampire, Crepes refuses because Steve’s blood “tastes evil” and Steve gets in a huff and storms off. Darren, meanwhile, nicks the CGI spider and goes home.

Darren, cleverly, takes the insanely deadly spider to school where it gets pissed off with being a waste of rendering time and bites Steve. In order to save his friend’s life Darren goes to Crepes and asks if he’ll give Steve the antidote. Crepes agrees, providing Darren becomes his half-vampire assistant, which he does.

Then there’s a whole bunch of crap about a fat guy who wants to bring about a war, Vampires and Vampaneze (the latter kill, the former don’t), and Steve getting really whiny about Darren “taking his place” as a vampire and becoming a Vampaneze and then fighting Darren.

The story is just trite, a mash of uninspired concepts and bland fantasy. The characters have nothing about them and it’s completely bizarre to see stars like Selma Hyack and Willem Defoe lend their time to them. The film has no idea whether it wants to be a comedy or a fantasy drama. Jokes will be followed seconds later by serious events but there’s no transition or subtlety which means neither element works. The performance of Darren is ham-fisted and flat, there’s nothing about him; bland and boring he’s essentially a fart in the wind.

It’s a film obviously made to cash in on the popularity of vampires, which has been roused by the teenage obsession for the godawful Twilight series, and feels like a rushed project. It’s not horrifically bad, but it’s not good either, it’s mediocre and forgettable on every level.