Vamp or Not? The Nameless Days

The Nameless Days is a 2022 film directed by Andrew Mecham and Matthew Whedon and centres around the Aztec figure of the cihuateteo – though the film doesn’t say as much (only mentioning cihuateteo) the monster is named in credits as Coaxoch (Ambyr Mishelle).

Now, the cihuateteo does appear in Bane’s Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology, which tells us it is “A type of vampiric, demonic demigoddess of the Aztec people of ancient Mexico, a cihuateteo is created when a mother dies in childbirth or a child is a stillborn.” The vampiric aspect is described as “Although cihuateteo will feed off lone travelers who they happen upon as they fly on their brooms through the jungle, they prefer the blood of infants.”

Alejandro Akara as Rahui

Of course, things in film do not necessarily conform to Bane's description of the myth. This begins on the Mexico/Texas border with traffickers looking to get people across. There is a small tunnel and they send a young boy through first, who comes out the other end fine. An armed man follows and they hear gunfire from the tunnel then the man re-emerges, holding his bleeding stomach. Something we do not see appears before the group and everyone scatters including Rahui (Alejandro Akara) and his heavily pregnant sister Gabriella (Ashley Marian Ramos).

Nicole and Charlie

Nicole (Ally Ioannides) is on her morning run, along the border, though she’ll deny where she ran later when she speaks to her dad, Charlie (Charles Halford, Constantine, Evil Angel & The First Vampire: Don't Fall for the Devil's Illusions). She stops by her friend’s house and talks to Caitlin (Ali Kinkade). She says that her uncle (estranged from Charlie) has said he can get her into the same private school that her cousins are in and will pay the tuition – they have a top-notch athletics department. Caitlin suggests she must go.

the idol

Charlie’s truck has broken down and his friend Wade (Trey Warner) reckons it’s the alternator. Nicole gets home and is sent to feed the animals – she finds blood and feather from one of the chickens, enters a shed and calls her dad. The remains of a makeshift camp is in the shed, including the (absent) immigrant’s bag. In it they find a stone idol – Wade later discovers it is a cihuateteo, carried to ward the demon off. Meanwhile, Rahui has left Gabriella in some ruins as he tries to lead federales off. We next see him as he breaks into Charlie and Nicole’s house. He runs off when caught and Charlie follows, finding the federales disembowelled.

the cihuateteo

The inevitable meeting, again, of Rahui and Nicole leads to her helping him find his sister and then trying to save the new baby from the cihuateteo. So, what we get for lore is that – as per Bane – the cihuateteo is created by a woman who dies in childbirth. This othering of a woman who has ‘failed’ in her feminine role is the misogynistic background for vampiric creatures such as the kuntilanak. This othering also underpins the Lilith myth (who becomes a devourer of children) and can be seen in Dracula with both the vampire women and the baby, and the hunting of children by Lucy once turned. The cihuateteo can return on 5 days unnamed in the Aztec calendar. She has a habit of disembowelling anyone she comes across (male or female) but is after Gabriella’s baby in particular. We do not necessarily see her feed and the film seemed to intimate that she wants to take the child as her own rather than feed on it

turning to dust

What Wade discovers is she cannot be killed and the only solution is to run, hide and stay away from her until the five days pass. This is put down to it being impossible to kill the dead and her face is skull-like when we see it. I have to touch on (and spoil) the ending at this point as we see her as day breaks and she starts to ‘dust’. As I watched the film I took it that was because the sun had dawned on a named day and her five days were up. However, looking at Bane again we get that they keep “to the dark places, as they were susceptible to sunlight; long- term exposure to it will destroy them.” In fairness this isn’t long-term exposure (it’s fairly short order), nevertheless it can be read as being destroyed by the sun.

Ally Ioannides as Nicole

I rather enjoyed this for what it was, though I have seen reviews that disliked the concentration on Charlie and Nicole, but I thought that worked. I saw one reviewer suggest Charlie was a no-good parent but everything indicated that, whilst he could and would get drunk, he had been a good father to Nicole – taking on full parenting after her mother ran out on them. This actually makes Charlie a mother figure in a film where the creature represents an othering of ‘failed’ mothers and you can also read the immigration aspect as being akin to bad motherhood – with aggressive border controlling being a failure to nurture. As for the ‘Vamp or Not?’ The creature is certainly listed in Bane and in the baseline myth seems to be vampiric. The dusting in sunlight feels vamp (if you read it that way) and the female vampire being anti-mother (notwithstanding the intimation within the text that she wants to be the mother of the new-born) is a trope within the vampire megatext. On the other hand, we don’t see feeding, just killing. This certainly uses tropes and I am tempted to go vamp with it given the myth it rests on.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

V-Wars: Shockwaves

Edited by: Jonathan Maberry

First published: 2016

Contains spoilers

The blurb: The Vampire Wars are raging. We're all infected. Anyone can turn at any time. Your ally one minute could be at your throat the next. Or you go suddenly crave their blood. V-WARS: SHOCKWAVES chronicles the spread of bloodlust, bloodshed, and violence between the living and the undead.

The review: I am a fan of the V-Wars series; I make no secret of that. If you look at my reviews of the first three volumes (One, two & three). You’ll see that I have heaped praise (and 9 out of 10 reviews) on them.

It saddens me therefore that this volume sees a dip in quality. Now that is not to say it is bad. There are some damn fine stories in here. However, it isn’t entirely consistent. It does have some nice arc moments with the emergence of the Red Empire – a quasi-religious group who worship a messiah figure of the Red Emperor – that being patient zero Michael Fayne, who they believe will return and lead them. We also get a reveal, at the end of the volume, of the identity of the Crimson Queen.

For Mayberry fans there are cameos of Joe Ledger and other characters from the Ledger series. We get a welcome return of the V-Wars character Mooney in a tale and the stories range a little further internationally. We also discover that not all the vampires are as a result of the Ice Virus and that some strains had survived and were around before the virus activated junk DNA.

I was disappointed by the editorial decision to keep most of the shorts as complete pieces (bar Mayberry’s own Wet Works and Red Empire, which are split into the more familiar vignette format). There also seemed, despite containing a multitude of vampire types, less of a "who's who" list going on. One of the stories, Young Bloods by Mike Watts seemed slightly out of place, in that it felt that it was set out of the V-Wars at some point in the future, concentrating (as it does) on a vampire only school that had been around for over a decade. However this is the first volume where I have actually felt a story was not as well written as the rest of the volume. Silver and Lead by John Skipp and Cody Goodfellow just felt a little sub-par to me. Now that may be unfair as the quality of prose is so good generally, but it knocked my immersion in the volume.

8 out of 10.

V-Wars: Blood & Fire: a Chronicle of the Vampire Wars - review

Editor: Jonathan Maberry

First published: 2014

Contains spoilers

The blurb: When anyone can turn.

When every street is a war zone.

Our world will burn.

Our world will bleed.

There is nowhere to run!

It's been one year since a virus triggered junk DNA and people all over the world started changing. Becoming something else. Craving blood.

It's been 10 months since the word "vampire" stopped being something from old monster stories and Hollywood movies.

It's been six months since our world and theirs erupted into war.

It's been two months since an uneasy peace was signed.

It's been one hour says that peace was shattered.

War is here again.

The Vampire War.

The review: Regular readers will know that I thoroughly enjoyed the first V-Wars volume and also enjoyed the first V-Wars graphic novel, though admittedly less so than the prose. For those unaware of the series, V-Wars is set in a world where a virus, released from ice drilling, has activated junk DNA in certain people around the world mutating than into vampires. There are a whole range of vampires dependent on genetic background. Indeed in this volume we discover that in this world they have seen and 92 species, including 18 subtypes not in literature. Folklorist Luther Swann postulates that could leave nearly 200 species from folklore as possible new species and further hybrids are possible beyond this.

Like the first volume, this volume is made up of short stories by different authors set in the universe and interspersed between each other. The writing is tight throughout, and the stories entertaining. As somewhat of a vampire geek part of the joy is the wide variety of vampire types used, although purists who prefer their vampires Slavic may be a little disappointed. In this volume I noted the following vampire types: draugr, kyonsi, a snake vampire whose species is not named (but the character has featured in both volumes), upor, cihuateteo, mandurugo (with aswang mentioned in passing), craqueuhhe, neuntöter (which are said to be covered in pustules containing pathogens, making them a plague carrier), nelapsi (with alp mentioned in passing) and kallikantzaros.

Werewolves do feature in this, but as a creature born of the ice virus it is suggested they are a subspecies of vampire. In the V-Wars universe the humans had only come across a few werewolves including a loup garou, and were hunting a vampire killing werewolf serial killer of another variety. Swann does list folklore variants including vampire/werewolf hybrids such as the pryccolitch or the Haitian loogaroo, who were said to be witches that shed their skins at night to become vampire/werewolf hybrids. Others mentioned are the mjertovjec (said to become a vampire on death), the lobishomen and the farkaskoldus.

Whilst many vampires in the V-Wars universe are blood drinkers or flesh eaters the broader definition is a person who has an abnormal need to feed on one of several vital substances including energy. I liked the explanation of the mandurugo being thought to split in half due to their excellent chameleon-like skills, thus only revealing part of themselves to attack.

As I intimated earlier this is a superb volume, as good as the first volume. I do like the short story style breaking the book into vignettes. This could easily translate itself into episodes for a TV series or chapters in a portmanteau film. I think there is perhaps also room for dedicated single focused novels. That, of course, is a fan boy’s wish list, and for now I'll happily sit and wait for the next V-Wars volume. 9 out of 10.