Daisy – review

Director: Michael S. Rodriguez

Release date: 2024*

Contains spoilers

*At the time of writing the IMDb page is silent on date, Amazon suggests 2024

This low-to-no budget film disarmed me in the fact that, whilst far from perfect, it looked way better than it should have done. It is based around a bat-like cryptid but, whilst situating the origin of the creature in Afghanistan, does not name the cryptid type. I have looked at man-bat creatures before on the blog and there is evidence enough for it being a vampire type.

burying Buck

It starts in 2005, in black and white, and has a guy who has determined to bury his dog, Buck, despite the fact that it peed on his speakers once. There is flapping in the night, and he seems to be carried off… Cut to the present and Trevor (Israel Ledesma) and Ginger (Sparkle Soojian) are driving on a date. She snorts some coke and puts some on her décolletage, which he refuses. The car breaks down as does, quickly, her opinion of him. There was a garage a-ways back and he determines to walk.

Trevor and Ginger

We next see them both in a garage owned by Afghan-vet Felix (Michael Wainwright), he needs to replace a part and suggests Trevor step in the back with him. He brains Trevor and then sets Daisy (Jamie Krivobok) on Ginger. We see a flash of a bat like face… The next day, after words with his deceased dad’s friend Carl (D.T. Carney), he goes into town and meets influencer D (Marcus Esparza). There is a brief confrontation, as D films him without permission, but then we see that D's car has broken down.

finding Daisy

With D not checking in, his friend Zero aka Z (Wade Pierson) and dad Jerry aka Pop (Manuel Ramirez) go to Cutler to find him and quickly discover he had interaction with Felix. In the meantime Felix is having flashbacks to Afghan (which are the poorest parts of the film) and chatting to Daisy, a vampire bat-creature he found out there. Daisy seems to be getting hungrier and is wanting to hunt through the day as well as night.

Jamie Krivobok as Daisy

Daisy speaks in a whistle and chatter sort of way but Felix can apparently understand her and she, likewise, can understand him. He found her whilst injured (with a leg blown off) awaiting rescue teams – she was in a hole and tiny enough to hide in his ammo belt, though she did bite him when he grabbed her. But beyond a taste for human flesh, and being a bat-creature, it is worth touching on the tropes that lead to classing her as a vampire.

biting Ginger

She does feed on flesh, but we see her bite necks and then suckle as well. Ginger is found alive and this, a flashback shows, is because Daisy tried to drink her blood but disliked it – intimating that the cocaine in Ginger’s system saved her. Despite being found in the desert and wanting to hunt in the day we do see her smoke when in the sun and the ragtag band of hunters desire to stake her through the heart. The film has two in-credit sequences and one suggests that, despite an inference that they are a separate species that reproduce naturally, a human victim can also be turned.

hunting Daisy

The majority of what little budget the film had was used on the Daisy costume, or so it appears. It may not look overly real but it works well enough, offering an old school B vibe. The acting is passable but the flashbacks to Afghanistan, with stock footage merged with some uninspiring original footage of an injured Felix, are poor to the point of I’d want them cut out if it wasn't for their importance in communicating the backstory of Daisy. At 62 minutes the film does not outstay its welcome, though. Better than it possibly deserved to be, 4 out of 10 is fair but does not communicate the fact that it overcomes the odds.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

The Devil’s Child – review

Director: David Bohorquez

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

That this is a vampire film might be debated but I think it offered enough tropes to make us able to class it (even if we don’t get actual blood drinking). We do also get a(n accidental) preview of an aspect of what Eggers later would do with Nosferatu. It is a Columbian film, but it is insinuated it is set in the US and it is shot in English language.

in the orphanage

The film looks lovely but its desire to make a narrative space for viewer interpretation possibly leads it to obscure itself too much. It starts with a young girl in tears as she is teased (in an orphanage we hear) and at one point she has “weirdo” drawn on her head. We then get an intertitle that says, “Diavlo. Extraordinary species with advanced mental abilities. Predators of the human race. Considered extinct since the late 19th century.” Diavlo was the original film title.

uncanny

A car follows a road, mist gives an air of the uncanny as it approaches woodland. In the car Sara (Alison Sullivan) and Maria (Francisca Estevez) are taking their friend Cherry (Maria Camila Perez) to a new job – I think an additional job, for a short period of time, rather than a permanent position. She is a nurse and has a hospital job and looking after Philip Halliwell (Germán Naranjo), which is what she is doing, is whilst his daughter Naomi (Fiona Horsey) is away.

met by Dwayne

She is picked up by the Halliwell’s handyman Dwayne (Marvens Passiano) just before the woods and they drive through the woods. Cherry suggests stopping for a cold dink but Dwayne says there are no places to stop – offering a sense of isolation. By the time they arrive Cherry has been sleeping and the house is a huge Gothic pile. Naomi is very stern and, after questioning Cherry, explains that her father has a skin condition and she must only use an oil lamp in his room and never open the curtains.

fangs

So, the sunlight is our first real trope and the fact that his care seems to consist of hooking up bags of blood is the second. However he does take the blood intravenously. We also see his eyes turn milky white (as do Naomi’s) and he communicates in this state telepathically – he shows Naomi violent imagery including him having a maw of fangs. He uses this telepathy to influence Cherry’s dreams, including seducing her with a younger version of himself (Juan Andrés Jiménez). Cherry is the girl in the orphanage and starts remembering the bullying she was subjected to and also seeing things (later we discover she used to see things as a child).

Germán Naranjo as Halliwell

Later she finds a portrait of a woman wearing the same necklace she wears (and she stated was something belonging to her mother). Dwayne suggests the portrait is of Violet, Halliwell’s sister. So, it seems she is of the family and, one assumes, a Diavlo – we certainly see her absent mindedly taste some blood that has dripped from a bag. I mentioned Eggers and, whilst this pre-dates it, we can see Halliwell’s hands seem monstrous with big thick nails, but he is also covered in sores (presumably bed sores) and it makes him look a bit like the decayed Orlok might look. This pre-dated style seems all the more so when his emaciated form tries to rape Cherry and therefore gave this an accidental and unintentional intertextual feel.

Fiona Horsey as Naomi

The film, however, does not overly explain things and this, along with its slow pace, may be off-putting to many. The arrival of Cherry’s friends at the house seemed misplaced and more to add some menace than to move the plot. A young boy that Cherry sees seems to be a projection of the future (Halliwell is said to have been known as a psychic – using his Diavlo powers undoubtedly) but it isn’t certain. An occult tome adds an air of mystery but is looked at once and is not translated for the viewer or character. As said, the pace is pretty slow but the photography stands out and the gothic atmosphere is certainly there. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

DVD @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Dark Ivory: Book 1 Blue Blood – review

Authors: Joseph Michael Linsner & Eva Hopkins

Art: Joseph Michael Linsner

Colouring: Joseph Michael Linsner & Eva Hopkins

First published: 2010 (TPB)

Contains spoilers

The Blurb: Ivory is a frustrated goth girl who escapes from her everyday world by sneaking out to dance at night. Her best friend Samson is always there to help her keep her feet on the ground. As Ivory’s club world fills with attractive, vampiric strangers, she thinks it would be so cool to be like them ― until it happens! Be careful what you wish for...

The Review: With the blurb as it is, I should have understood what I’d likely get from this graphic novel but, unfortunately, it still managed to underwhelm me. I think, perhaps, because I am not the target audience but, in truth, it came across as a Goth wish fulfilment graphic novel.

The volume starts with a character, Esque, attacking a woman in a parking lot and hoping – and succeeding – in getting a vision of a winged, pale vampire woman (his blood angel, as he names her) as he drinks the victim’s blood, and as a result being distracted, the victim punishing him and running away.

The primary character is Ivory, a Goth gal whose mother doesn’t understand her and who is not massively committed to school. Her best friend is rock aficionado Samson. He is her sister's ex, was into cutting and both of them figure the other wouldn’t be into them. She loves to go to Goth clubs, wearing fake wings, and dancing (not imbibing of drinks or drugs) but one day meets someone who takes her to the VIP area of the club and gives her a pill… This leads to blood related hallucinations and she is changed…

Turns out she was special, true vampires are born not made and it has awakened her – Ivory's heritage is something her mother tried to keep from her (her mother was of royal blood). This doesn’t gel with her mother’s apparent ignorance of both the scene Ivory is in and the state when she gets back from the club. However, on the basis that this is pure wish fulfilment fantasy, it kinda doesn't matter if it gels. Esque is not the same. Coincidentally in a relationship with one of Ivory’s few friends, openly a vampire with said friend, he is called a chandala, or an untouchable. The low status of the character contrasting to make Ivory even more special.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t necessarily all bad – especially if you are a Goth/emo girl with a vampire fetish. Wish fulfilment fantasies have their place. However, it didn’t do it for me story-wise. Combine that with the art, which whilst well drawn was too stark and graphic for my taste, utilitarian springs to mind, well I wasn’t bought in. For me a 4 out of 10, but worth more for the target audience, I’m sure.

In Paperback @ Amazon US

In Paperback @ Amazon UK

Deep Undead – review

Director: Dave Castiglione

Release date: 2005

Contains spoilers

This is a budget flick that has had the Blu-Ray treatment by Vinegar Syndrome and has a respectable score on IMDb, which as you watch you wonder why? In some respects I fear being harsh, after all it was early work by inexperienced filmmakers and writer/director Dave Castiglione came up with a concept that became a brave attempt at, evidentially, biting off more than he could chew. On the other hand, it is a blooming difficult watch.

divers

The film begins with a couple of divers looking around a shipwreck. Kudos to this budget production for pulling off underwater sequences but… this is ten minutes of pretty murky footage of divers round a wreck, with no real narrative driving it. One scares the other and then one clutches their head and, at the end of the sequence, they have both died. This cuts into a news report about spills from a drum of radioactive waste produced by a nuclear power station by the lake.

Pamela Sutch as Megan Flowers

The report is by Megan Flowers (Pamela Sutch), a reporter who believes more is going on there. The report mentions that the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) are investigating. Indeed they have arranged for a diving team, led by Kirk Taylor (David Maul) and contracted to the power company, to go into the lake to find the missing divers. The team fails to do so and Taylor has to go in when it appears his team is in trouble. They end up pulling out their diver, Cujo (Vince Butler), but not finding the bodies. There is, they have discovered, radiation round the wreck and Cujo reports seeing an angel who breathed life into him – and has neck punctures they put down to fishing hooks.

Flowers and Ronnie

Flowers tries to get some info but Kirk ain’t talking. Kirk’s girlfriend Ronnie (Dawn Murphy) is going to the beach with her daughters, Kimberley (Caitlin Morgan) and Lisa (Christina Rose), when Flowers approaches them and manages to get Ronnie talking. She leaves them on the beach just before Lisa gets in trouble in the water and yells that something has hold of her and suggests she has been bitten. Ronnie gets into the water to pull her out – Lisa's leg is caught in a fishing net but the body of a diver bobs up also – and Flowers runs back to the beach, only to be grabbed by someone in hazmat gear.

hospital vampire

Meanwhile Kirk loses his contract with the power company, who offer the divers direct employment for ropey sounding work. Cujo becomes ill and the NRC order a purge of water with the divers still in the system. So, we have conspiracy and big business and regulatory bodies acting rogue… but what about vampires. Well, there is one in the wreck (Debbie D, Vampyre Tales & Requiem for a Vampire) who was bitten by another as the ship wrecked in the 1920s and who has, as far as I can tell, been hibernating until the increased heat of the waters (and, I assume the radiation) woke her. Who is the main vampire? I won’t spoil but will say they sound as though they are a separate species to humanity.

plastic fangs

This is a struggle. The narrative isn’t best communicated and scenes drag on. There are logical lapses aplenty also. However, I can’t take away from the fact that there was an ambitious idea here and a budget film using underwater photography was impressive. Other moments are just bizarre – a vampire visiting another in the hospital and the pov over a pair of plastic boobs was just odd. Similarly, Flowers breaking herself and the kids out of a hospital, meeting up with a conveniently parked Kirk (all with a comment about the kids being safer with them) and then taking them out in a rubber dinghy whilst he night dives to the wreck… well their idea of safety isn’t the one I have. I must also mention the line where Kirk describes his wetsuit as having material that shields radiation, hilarious as it is a suit with no arms leaving them exposed, Flowers buys that, at least. Not great but ambitious, 2.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK

Sammy Slick: Vampire Slayer – review

Director: Christopher Leto

Release date: 2023

Contains spoilers

Sneaking onto Amazon’s VoD, comes Sammy Slick: Vampire Slayer and I have to admit I like the artwork, a little reminiscent of the art for I Had a Bloody Good Time at House Harker but with a definite sense of style.

Artwork aside there is some decent photography in here, a sense of professionalism for an indie (and, I understand, crowdfunded) flick but there are aspects that are a little off also and I get the feeling the filmmakers could have tidied some aspects up a little and exploited other aspects a bit as well.

Klein Wong as Sammy Slick

The setting is Ybor City, Florida and we see a man, soon to be revealed as the eponymous Sammy Slick (Klein Wong). He realises that someone is trailing him and just before a street corner goes into a run. The pursuer chases and finds Sammy stood waiting. After suggesting that the guy doesn’t know who he is, he stakes him. He gets into the entrance area to a building and another vampire stands before him, two come up behind. He fights the first, staking him, and the other two run away.

breaking the fourth wall

In the building is his office and his secretary Ash (Ariella Aegen) tells him he has an appointment. In his office he breaks the fourth wall and talks to the audience and explains that he is a vampire hunter and a private eye and goes through some of the lore. They have fangs, drink blood, don’t reflect and need invitations. However, they like garlic, can go out in sunlight, are very charming and have a weird lavender aroma. He uses a custom silver stake (as we see the grain later, wood painted silver) but crosses don’t work – this, we discover at the end, isn’t entirely true. He has hunted vampires for four years and hates them.

Barbora Sulova as Sofia

Later he does another fourth wall break for more information, including the fact that a vampire does not turn a human and they reproduce amongst their own kind – making them a separate species. I get that direct to the audience exposition allows an easy way to get the rules over but it really felt like more could have been done with the fourth wall breaks. Anyway, his appointment arrives. She is Shana (Arielle Fray), a stripper, and she thinks her new boss, Sofia (Barbora Sulova), is a vampire. She explains that regulars are going missing and then describes an attack she witnessed on a smoke break.

vampire kill

He checks the club out (he doesn’t take Ash, though she asks) and decides that it may well be a vampire hide out and gets out of there as fast as possible. The next morning, he is woken by a knock at his apartment door and it’s a delivery. He invites the deliveryman in and then realises his mistake. There is a skirmish and the vampire gets away. Sammy and Ash decide it would be better to stay close but they are attacked on the way to his apartment – an attack foiled by Ash and a pencil to the vampire’s neck (distracting him for Sammy to then stake). Turns out she was a vampire hunter too and had sought out Sammy for a job… one wonders why that hadn’t come out in the two months she had worked for him prior (I mean, the gal has firearm stake launchers in the boot of her car).

double bite

Its little things like that in the story that makes the narrative struggle. There is a whole network of vampire hunters apparently and the police cover up messes (the vampires go into a cgi dissolution but a cop covers up a human body left in Sammy’s bed) and yet dozens of men are going missing and the cops are nowhere in sight generally and hunter backup is not called. Sofia is a Vampirus (or big bad female vampire) and all the dancers (bar Shana) are vampires – making one wonder why they kept a non-vampire on the books and alive. So, there were bits of the story that just didn’t hang right for me. The action wasn’t particularly convincing either – I understand Klein Wong is a cage fighter so I suspect that is down to choreography or direction rather than the actor’s skill.

Ash and Sammy

However, the central characters worked well, especially due to Ariella Aegen’s screen presence. She just felt very natural with an infectious smile that added to the humorous back and forth between her and Sammy. The comedy was lowkey. The vampiric imagery, when we got it, was rather good – a sequence with vampires biting hypnotised/drugged (the film didn’t say) humans in the club after hours had some great shots. I need to mention D'Andre Noiré who played a half-vampire/half-human who had been created in a lab (suggesting cross species breeding isn’t a thing), who was a hit man for the vampires – he just oozed screen presence.

D'Andre Noiré as Shock and Awe

This had promise and I wanted to like it a lot more than I did – but it wasn’t terrible, it was just things that occur through indie/budget filmmaking. Some of the locations were a tad off, the club for instance was just a big space, some chairs at the wall and naked girls with dancing punters – it didn’t feel like a club (lack of stage, for one thing). The script could have been tightened (after repeated incursions into his apartment, you’d have thought he would have actually gone to ash’s home instead, or how Sofia’s right hand, Izzy (Honeylet Conlu) had somehow heard a rumour that the hunters were going to trail Sofia home… where did she get the intel? Only Sammy and Ash knew about the plan) and the action made more impactful. Nevertheless, it was worth the time spent watching and 4 out of 10 should be read with the thought that this is a block to build upon.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Short Film: Ten Questions

A film that comes in around the 25-minute mark, this was directed by Andrew Damon Henriques and released in 2013. It has a simple premise but does what it does well enough with a fair twist in the tail.

It starts with a man (Peter Quinones) tied to a chair, his limbs held by cable ties and his head covered with a bag.

We see a woman (Christina Wood) enter the background of the scene, wearing a white dress. She removes it, carefully folding it, and then we see her walk to the man. He starts saying he has a wife and kids but she calls him a liar – he was chosen for a reason; he has no family life and she knows this. Once he is able to see, he realises that she is naked and then, finally understanding, he accuses her of being a God freak who thinks she is a v…

beaten

The word doesn’t get out of his mouth, she starts to beat him mercilessly, leaving him bloodied. She does apologise, to some degree, but her kind don’t like the V word. Having given her name, Afryea, and finding out that he is Caleb, he asks what she wants – it is simple, of course, she wants his blood and fear makes it taste better. However, as they speak, she finds a better use for him.

fangs

Humans are not aware of the world order and our God has restarted the world and civilisations many times. The vampires, a separate race, worship (and were created by) Satan and Afreya decides that she can use Caleb. She will tell him the history of her people and then he must answer ten questions on what she has taught him. If he gets them correct then he will go and preach her story in a way that will break down the faith of humanity – when he argues that he may not persuade people, she counters that it is the telling of the story that is important, the impact will inevitably come with time. Get the questions wrong and she’ll eat him.

veins popping

So this was neatly put together and I liked the separate species premise that was used. The question is, of course, does he answer the ten questions accurately? Well, that would, of course, be telling. As mentioned, there is a nice twist in the tail, it isn’t earth-shattering but fit neatly into the premise. There are a few single-backdrop moments that manage to break-up the one (basement/kill room) location. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK

Slash/Back – review

Director: Nyla Innuksuk

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Adding in elements that explore the coming of age of Inuit girls (this film tells its story through the eyes of a group of girls), and also touching on questions of alienation from tradition as these indigenous youth push away from their collective past but discover they need that tradition to survive, Slash/Back is a film that skirts around horror (it is perhaps a little more action, though has some tentacled moments and some interesting body horror) as it uses that youth lens but has alien vampires.

Tasiana Shirley as Maika

It begins on a ship as a father teaches his daughter Maika (played young by Niviaq Mike and older by Tasiana Shirley) to hunt. This is followed by a man out in the wild, in modern day, who sees something odd in the snow and is killed, with an implication that it has his face off. Elsewhere the older Maika seems embarrassed by her father and mother and both estranged from and ashamed of her indigenous heritage. We see this in things as simple as responding to her parents in English, to her desire to attack traditional art and food and dislike of her home, the town of Pangnirtung, Nunavut.

spotting the bear

After a moment where her little sister, Aju (Frankie Vincent-Wolfe), has some money conned from her by Maika’s friend Uki (the tough-as-nails Nalajoss Ellsworth) and she gets it back, she takes her father’s rifle and she, Uki, Jesse (Alexis Wolfe) and Lenna (Chelsea Prusky) take a boat out to the Land and leave Aju behind. After Uki has bragged about being a great shot, and Maika has refused to show off her shooting skills, they spot a bear acting odd, it walks strangely. About this time Aju finds them – having cycled – when Uki shoots the bear.

the bear attacks

It falls and then suddenly it is up and runs at Aju, who is frozen. It is on her before Maika can load and shoot but, once Maika can get the shot off, it falls and the young girl is shaken but otherwise unharmed. However, she is covered in a black oily substance, rather than blood. They return to the town and we see a tentacle or snake like thing emerge from the bear’s eye-socket and slink away. Back home the girls talk to their contemporaries about what happened – Uki suggests it was Ijirak – shapeshifting creatures that steal children in Inuit folklore but Maika reacts vehemently against the thought that it might be anything like that.

the parasite infested fox 

Having been invited to a party when the adults are out (it is solstice and the adults have a dance organised) the girls go out – with the grounded Lenna sneaking out and Uki not to be found as she has gone back to the Land because of a dare by Maika. There Uki sees a group of animals acting odd around a shape – which she realises is draining blood when it attaches a tentacle to prey and later suggests is some sort of ship (the leaps to understand what is occurring in this are taken on faith) – and is attacked by an artic fox. The fox has tentacles that emerge from its eyes and mouth and Uki manages to kill it by slitting its throat – getting the black blood on herself in the process.

wearing the cop like a disguise

Back at the village she crashes the party to tell everyone about the hunter aliens but we have seen a polar bear attack a cop and he has been taken over and enters the party hunting Uki. So, the aliens do drink blood, draining their prey dry, but then may wear the kill like an ill-fitting skin and can smell their own blood. They are hunting Uki and Aju until the primary girls turn the tables and, embracing their own traditions, hunt them back. As they work out what is happening they also work out that the blood fuels the aliens so their flesh puppets are quicker and stronger but falter when they run out of fuel, as it were. We do get a face ripped away and see inside one of the possessed (possessed is perhaps a bit strong given that it is more wearing skin).

the girls hunt the aliens

This is good fun, it is simplistic in how it explains the lore – as I said above the girls just seem to work out things in great narrative explaining leaps, but there are fab moments, like Maika and Jesse suddenly ignoring they are looking for killer alien parasites wearing a person as a disguise and argue over a boy. The tension between tradition and modernity is explored well – a line about folklore being old people stories made up because there was no internet was inciteful in its summing up of that tension. The acting is sometimes faltering, but works as a group of kids becoming adults and exposes their awkwardness.

face (mask) removed

The effects are fun – the fact that the human/aliens look like masks work, because they are actually skin masks and I enjoyed their inhuman, jerky movements. The whole effect side has a B quality to it that works with the sci-fi element. There is a whole bit of this that feels like a homage to the Thing – apt as we get Jesse explaining the plot of the film. There is an element of social justice with Maika wearing a jacket that says “No justice on stolen land”, a Caucasian cop hassling the kids and the film title, at the end, morphing to Land Back – so of course the idea of aliens coming, killing the animals and draining the blood of the animals and people fits into that narrative.

feeding

On the other hand, as fun as this is it does struggle to carry a horror element as well as it might, as well as moving the narrative explanations with leaps that felt too much of a character’s logical leap and so I think 6 out of 10 is fair. The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK

Bats – review

Directors: Scott Jeffrey & Rebecca Matthews

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

Also known as Bats: The Awakening, I will do something with this that I don’t normally do with films and quote the blurb (from it’s Amazon description, identical on IMDb): An alien virus that once wiped civilizations out in ancient times through out (sic) time has returned overnight by a mysterious thunderstorm infecting all the bats in the area causing them grow into grotesque giant carnivore man-eater monster bats and it's up to humankind to fight for their lives to survive or history will once again repeat it's self as it has thousands of years ago.

Got it… good… forget it. What a load of old rot but then, as we’ll see the film itself tries to layer itself with subterfuge. In fact alien viruses are never mentioned, nor the thunderstorm, nor past history and there is just one (that we see) giant bat and it is a man-bat… but we start with a tad of trespassing…

Nicole Nabi as Natalie

Two blokes, Jack (Marek Lichtenberg) and Drew (Ellis Tustin), and a lass, I think Natalie (Nicole Nabi), break into a house for beer and sex. You might have noticed I used rather British descriptors – blokes and lass – and that was purposeful. As they begin to speak, we get some awful American accents (one particularly bad) and this is the subterfuge I mention. This is a UK film but it pretends to be American, not just in accents but references to a ranch and calling 911. This is despite the fact that it is clearly shot in the UK countryside (indeed the house they’ve broken into has a Book of British Birds on display). Why? I don’t know but the accents are really distracting all the way through.

dead Drew

Nevertheless, there is talk of the area being abandoned some ten years before due to some kind of nuclear accident and the all-clear only being given a year before. The owners clearly never returned to the house. Yet somehow the electric is still connected (later we discover that the phoneline is also connected)… There is some chatter and then Natalie has sex with Jack, with Drew watching, and then Drew. Drew goes to the bathroom and is attacked and killed by a man-bat, which bites the neck it seems, Jack is attacked by a swarm of normal sized crap bats and finally Natalie is killed by the man-bat.

Nosferatu Village

Three weeks later and Jamie (Megan Purvis) is still getting over the fact that her fiancée Matty (Mat Sibal) died in a car crash. Mum (Amanda-Jade Tyler) (or mom – American accents and expressions remember) persuades her that Grandma (Kate Sandison) could do with support going back to her old house as they have been told there were squatters there – yes it’s the house from the prologue but who told them there were squatters? Indeed where have the bodies gone? Perhaps she got an unexpected electricity bill? (I’m kidding, after all the electric should have been disconnected). Anyway it’s a family trip with sister Amelia (Georgia Conlan) and dad (Ricardo Freitas) who all drive out in the one car. There is an old evacuation sign that signifies that we are in Nosferatu Village – not ominous at all…

behind you

Anyway, its daylight and all are fine (mention is made of the time of day later). Jamie and Amelia go for a walk – with Amelia taking and losing the car keys, inconveniently – and find an abandoned church, also with electricity, a strangely placed altar (traditionally they are not next to the church door) and more strangely with a Japanese katana on the altar (not remarked on but useful later, you can bet). Eventually Grandma goes to the attic (with suspiciously stone floor), stands in guano and is attacked and bitten by the man-bat. She escapes its clutches but the hunt is now on…

death, Scanners' style

The bat has what looks like thermal vision and yet also misses people hiding in the cold dark! The only other things to note is that the bite triggers a rapid onset illness (so, like the Nosferatu, a plague spreader), which causes the flesh to rot off the bone and the bat can release a squeal that can make a head explode Scanners style. Beyond this the family make some strange assumptions. Jamie is attacked by and kills a normal size bat and assumes it is the man-bat's offspring (hence it attacking them – despite this being after the biting of grandma) – the strange assumption is that a normal bat is its offspring (why wouldn’t they be man-bats?) Another one is that they have woken it from a hibernation, without considering that the squatters (hardly squatters actually, given they were in the house all of a couple of hours) had been in the house.

bite

So if this is sounding awful… well the accents are, the pretending to be in America is, and the plotting is. It is low budget, however I have to say that the man-bat outfit was rather fun… not Hollywood standard but certainly good enough to have been in more mainstream 60s and 70s UK horror (the normal crap bats did deserve the crap moniker though). Indeed the little bit of gore – exploding head and rotting arm – worked rather well too. If the filmmakers had allowed their actors to use their own accents and decided to bridge some of the bigger logic leaps this might have proven to be an ok little low budget horror – the absolute shame is that the worst elements they deliberately did to themselves. As for the man-bat – it has fangs, bites the neck, spreads plague, is likely a mutation but a separate species to humans and the use of Nosferatu Village indicates the direction of travel was deliberate.

A film that is its own worst enemy – 3 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK