Dead & Beautiful

Vampirism has always been a moral parable about the wealthy, and sometimes the old (i.e. Eternal life) feeding on the poor and the young.

So, to recap, this is a painfully obvious, lame "social experiment" about a bunch of bored narcissists and sociopaths with more money than sense to see how far they'll degrade into violence and cruelty if they imagine they're vampires.

What is new about this? Aside from the global cast (three Asian people and two Europeans) and the 21st century backdrop this is the same old story rehashed for a new generation. In fact, it's worse than that, because it's just so obvious unless you're a kid or slow on the uptake.

I'm not sure what I expected in a 'Shudder' movie. But this wasn't it! I love the Asian ladies and downloaded it just because of the cover shot and the Vampire mention. What I got was just utterly ridiculous and insulting. There was no plot. Just spoiled rich kids and randomness.

It was slow and boring. Never gets anywhere. We gave it over half the time and finally shut it off. Could've been cool, but they just dragged out a seriously boring story.

This film essentially involves five young adults who happen to be exceeding rich and extremely bored discussing ways to change their situation. With that in mind, one particular woman by the name of "Anastasia" (Anna Marchenko) comes up with an idea and they all head out into a remote part of the country to commune with nature. At least, that is what she initially planned as later that night they are met by a shaman who performs some type of ritual and then after inhaling some smokey substance they all drift into a deep sleep and start having vivid dreams. When they wake up they notice that the shaman is dead from apparent bite marks on his neck and that they all have suddenly grown sharp fangs. Needless to say, this terrifies them and they quickly head back to the city to discuss this sudden turn of affairs with one in particular named "Alexander" (Yen Tsao) wanting to fully embrace his vampiric self-with all that that entails. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I just happened to stumble upon a review of this film by a prolific writer on IMDb and even though his critique was less than enthusiastic I thought I would check it out for myself. After all, the poster and the overall story looked quite interesting and I wanted to see if there was something he might have missed. Well, it turns out his overall assessment was correct for the most part as this film happened to be both long and incredibly boring. It did have some good points, however, as the camera work was exceedingly good and Aviss Zhong (as "Lulu") was not only remarkably attractive but fit the part quite well too. Even so, the film itself never seemed to really go anywhere. Likewise, the ending was totally botched and I was left with more questions than answers. Having said that, while I don't consider this movie to be terribly bad, it clearly didn't realize its potential and I have rated it accordingly.

First of all, and this was really grinding my gears, the title is false advertising. Not a single one of the main cast was "beautiful". The closest thing you got to being attractive with this group was the white dude, and even he was some boy-body twig with an unruly mop of hair on his head. The two females, in particular, looked about as basic as they could get and not at all cute, and really, the only person who came close to being truly good looking was the male escort they picked up halfway through the film. There are dozens of truly beautiful actors in Asia and THIS is what they came up with for a movie with the word BEAUTIFUL in its title? Shame.

Secondly, out of any vampire movie I've ever seen, I have never seen one this absolutely boring, slow and uneventful. Nothing goes on for the majority of the film, and if it weren't for the stunning cinematography, I would have given up on this movie after 20 minutes. As it stands, good shots do not make a good movie, and the lack of action, coupled with some of the worst English I've ever heard (some of their accents were atrocious. If English isn't your strong suit, please stick to speaking your native language, especially in a movie where English is the second of third language for the actors of this film) made this movie a slog to get through.

It's incredible; this movie looked like with the right talent and a tighter, more horror focused script, it would have been something worth watching. What we got is an art house film about a bunch of trust fund lames who just happened to become vampires. It should have been interesting, but it really isn't.

Don't bother with this one, folks. It's just not good.