Cirque du Freak: El aprendiz de vampiro

This movie was surprisingly good, mind you I went it with zero expectations. The premise Is fairly well developed, but the storyline itself leaves a lot to be desired. There's no real conclusion to anything, there's a 'final fight' scene which is well choreographed but doesn't do much to actually end the movie. It seems like they were trying to set up a sequel that never happened. I enjoyed the rest of the movie, it was definitely for kids, but easy to watch.

Good music, characters and creativity. But the story is rushed and acting is painful at parts, which makes the entire movie laughable.

Although I worked in a bookstore a while back, I never actually did read a single of the Darren Shan books, although just familiar with them from the genre and the covers. So I wasn't even aware that this movie was based on those, until I watched the DVD extras after having seen the movie.

I found this movie in a secondhand store, and thought to myself 'a vampire movie with John C. Reilly, well that ought to be unusual', and so I picked it up and decided to give it a go.

I will say that, much like "Twilight", this vampire movie is a vampire movie for a teenage audience. However, unlike "Twilight", this movie is not about love, sparkly vampires (though the big hair is here!) or werewolves (again, there is one of those as well). "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" is a bit more gloomy and dark compared to the lovefest known as "Twilight". However, that being said, it is not really enough to make it overly suitable for an audience out of their teenage years. I was waiting and hoping for a bit more than the movie did deliver.

The story is about a young boy named Darren (played by Chris Massoglia) and his friend Steve (played by Josh Hutcherson) who come across a traveling freak show that is in town for one night only. They go there and enter a world of bizarre oddities and a brooding war between vampires.

"Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" does have some rather impressive names to the cast list. Despite my first initial puzzlement about John C. Reilly being in a vampire movie, then he actually did a good job, and comes to show his diversity of being an actor outside the comedy genre. But the movie also has Salma Hayek, Willem Dafoe, Frankie Faison, Ken Watanabe and Ray Stevenson to the cast list. And much has probably be said about this already, but seeing Salma Hayek with a beard was just fun - and most impressively was that she carried it so well.

One of the better things in the movie, was the costume design and the set designs. There were so many nice details to the clothing, and especially to the fream show camp. Keep your eyes open here, because there is a lot of really nice treats to behold. And if you get the DVD with the extras on it, I suggest you take the tour of the camp, because it is really worth it.

"Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" is a teenage movie and a movie for fans of the Darren Shan books, I am sure. I found it to be entertaining enough for a single watching, but I doubt I will ever make a second watching out of it. It was just a bit too much out of my interest. As much as I have strained to point out the target audience age of this movie, then "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" was still more enjoyable than "Twilight" (of which, I mistakenly saw the first movie, and stayed well clear of all that came afterwards).

The film 'Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant' is directed by Paul Weitz. The film takes place in America, shown through common American features. This film is a vampire teen thriller which was quite exciting and contains lots of action. The acting was good especially from Darren and Mr Crepsley as they show emotion clearly. For me, the best moment has to be when Mr. Crepsley and the Vampanese leader had a fight as it was up in tempo and thrilling. I really enjoyed the film because it was very different from most vampire films. This makes it unique. If I had to change anything, I'd make it more realistic and believable. I would recommend this film if you like cheesy action films.

I threw this on after a bad day not wanting anything too heavy, expecting a typical crappy teen movie, but it was much better than I expected. It was interesting and funny without crossing over into being campy. Josh Hutcherson's role was a bit too stereotypical, but I rather liked John C. Reilly's character. Not a mind-blowing movie, but worth the watch imo.