It's such a terribly written script. I've been repeating those words countless times whilst I watched this.
Rushiness is typical nowadays, especially with a 80 minute movie. But this is by far no excuse.
The start is good and interesting. Feels down to earth and engaging as well as kicking off a potentially good story rather well. It continues for about 40 % of the movie in a decent, yet sorta rushed phase but keeps us engaged and with expectations. Though in a positive way.
But by the time we cross that 40 % and move towards the Point of No Return everything begins getting awfully F-ing annoying and way beyond rushed. It literally does it very best to become a HUGE cliché and just ruin your experience so far.
We get the vampire theme. We get the build up sorta between these 2 girls. We have a good thing going.
But then of course we gotta shoe-horn in some annoying, whiny dude who's gotta just annoy the living crap out of us with his jealousy, paranoia and stalker behavior which ultimately turns him into this rapy dude, who's full of lies and BS yet somehow cares... His character is a complete joke. Its so half-baked you don't even know what the hell is going on, yet he's the trigger figure for putting a spin on things, before him ultimately being this evil vampire figure, hellbent on raping and killing our lead character for...reasons, thus leading to a insanely cringy ending. Its so poorly written and structured and just rips us out from what viewing pleasure we had up until this point.
After this the film continues with further clichés like this notion of homophobia, which is to me completely stupid considering this is a vampire film in 2016 ! yet somehow that is still relevant. My question is why? Its so painful to watch because its wasting our time with this " Omg you're dating a girl, not a guy" jibber jabber. Who the hell cares. Wheres the fantasy stuff? Character progression? There is so much pointless filler in this movie. And the worst part it its only 80 minutes long, yet seemingly contains so much pointless trash. Which makes its rushy phase so much worse.
I see potential here. I enjoyed the beginning reminding me of "We are the Night" with a twist. It just doesn't continue.
Instead we get so many annoying, pointless characters that get WAAY too much screen time like Tory Spelling, which surprised me. I like Spelling. But her mother character here is so horrifically made that shes not just bothersome, but downright annoying as hell. And alike the dude, shes just there...all the time, messing up an otherwise interesting story.
My best way of explaining why this happened was: "It seems they were too busy making this a TELEVISION movie...than just an actual movie. And that is really damn sad due to its potential. It could have been a nice vampire, teen flick with a bit of We are the Night, bit of twilight, bit of Buffy kinda. I can see that potential. Because I LOVE this genre.
And thus I freaking hate seeing this poor execution. What baffles me is that its a remake of the 96 version yet they made no improvements, nor increased its longevity to add more context or interesting story.
What is the point in remaking things if you're remaking s.h.i.t ? Seriously. Melanie Aitkenhead.
And my question to Amber Coney is just....why? Like...in general, to the entire thing. Why? When you read your script, your lines and the behavior of the characters present, did you approve of what you had written? Because one word I kept uttering whilst watching this cringey film, with its cringey characters and lines, plus rushed as hell phase from 1 scene to the next after the point of no return was: "Cancer"
Now. This is my subjective opinion of what I've seen and you can argue I might not like this specific approach and script writing.
But there are things in life that can be referred to as "Bad" And I believe that term applies to a lot of decisions in this script. It has a good concept. It has a good genre. Its story has potential. But the execution and its rush to the goal line after setting up the characters that were supposed to be in the focus, WHICH changes entirely half way in, makes for such insanely bad and uninteresting story telling.
I found this movie's story offensive to what I consider and expect to be good, interesting, engaging and fulfilling story progression with proper, solid context leading it from Point A to Point B.
Which ultimately leads me to the final conclusion of not at all being surprised by any of these terrible decisions made by both writer and director, when after googling them I found out both are very inexperienced in this field of expertise.
And I'm so tired of seeing bad directors and poor, alleged script writers ruining good potential for a genre that is on the rise but suffers from these stereotypical Hollywood trashy remakes and cash-ins. The movie poster doesn't even make any remote sense. Its comical if anything. Directly meant to lure people in with Franco's face yet his role is minor.
3 out of 10. Wasted potential by amateurs who have no business directing movies or writing scripts for them. Im sick of this wasting the time of people as well as their money with this laziness. It's garbage because it raises your expectations but falls flat intentionally due to lack of creativity.
In short it's a damn shame. Romantic concept, yet admirable, can't save it. This is not twisted. Its cringe and garbage.
