Vampyres

To be frank, I've been unreasonably excited to watch this for one reason: I absolutely hated José Ramón Larraz's original 1974 film. I found it lacking in meaningful horror, eroticism, or baseline sensuality, otherwise poorly made, and altogether flailing, dull, and boring. Fast-forward 40 years, and surely Victor Matellano couldn't do any worse with a remake, could he? Seeing as how within the first three minutes (most of which are the opening credits) 2015's version of 'Vampyres' demonstrates a more earnest sense of sexual energy and genre thrills, and substantially better direction, cinematography, stunts, and effects? Well surprise, surprise, by doing the bare minimum of film-making and storytelling, Matellano has already bested Larraz in at least some measure. And these aspects remain consistently better throughout these 80 minutes, though not consistent within this picture itself. With that said, it can reasonably be remarked that this is an extremely mixed bag in pretty much every regard. By being a mixed bag instead of abjectly awful this is an improvement; admittedly, however, such a statement doesn't necessarily get one very far.

Beyond illustrating some level of more rudimentary competence than Larraz, whether or not this rendition is any good of its own accord is another question. Matellano shows little to no mind as a filmmaker for tact or nuance, and that bluntness generally trickles down to other facets such as most of the performances, editing, music, costume design, sound design, and more, including too much of the sex scenes, and the fundamental production values. That's not to say that these elements are thusly tawdry across the board, or even if they were, that they couldn't still be worthwhile such as they are. There are actually some fine examples here of shot composition, for example, and themes in the score - and hey, the feature still manages to somehow build a small tinge of atmosphere (another advantage over Larraz), even as the plot doesn't so much advance as it does stumble forward and to the side. But the cumulative effect is troublesome nonetheless. In fairness to the cast and crew alike, I can't tell if they're just poor actors, and inadequate at their own jobs, or if Matellano is just that bad of a writer and director. The dialogue (and its delivery) is mostly so rotten that I'd rather there weren't any dialogue at all; this is actually a very visual movie anyway, so the verbiage is broadly superfluous. Too much of the scene writing is so forceful and unsubtle that I wonder if we wouldn't have been better off had Matellano gone the most brazen route and shot his own picture based specifically on Larraz's screenplay, and possibly just changing or adding small bits and pieces. I don't think Matellano's new story around the same concept is bad, but it's indisputably very light on substance, to the point that when the "climax" rolls around, it feels like a total non sequitur.

The ending, meanwhile - the sequence of short moments we get in succession following the climax - has one good idea among them, culminating in the final shot. The rest are so haphazard and weakly written that I'm not even sure what we're supposed to make of most of it. Within those last minutes, at least part of it all could have been left on the cutting room floor without losing anything. That goes for a lot of the horror violence, for that matter, which is little more than slightly toned-down "torture porn" a la Eli Roth. It looks great, and is duly gnarly, but I think it would've had more impact if it were approached more carefully and sparingly. 2015's sex scenes are a significant improvement on 1974's, which I thought to be among the worst I've ever seen, but are still often too heavy-handed; moreover, the nudity here is tiresomely gratuitous. It's noteworthy that Matellano filmed his Spanish production in English: for as much as his cast tend to struggle with the language, or at least to naturally and convincingly deliver their lines in it, I'm flummoxed as to why he didn't simply shoot in Spanish in the first place and employ subtitles. And so on, and so on. It would be too easy to continue to go into considerable detail about all the peculiarities in 'Vampyres,' and pick it apart, but all the criticism boils down to the same thing. For whatever the filmmaker, his cast, and his crew did well here, the project was in dire need of far more mindful, more attentive, and tighter writing, acting, and craftsmanship. Every component part would have benefited were the production at large more tempered, restrained, and thoughtful in every regard, and the intended effect of the horror or eroticism would have been heightened in turn. Instead, in too many ways this feels like the most bare-bones, unpolished realization possible of the concept. (Which, once more, really says a lot about Larraz, that his movie was absolutely worse.)

I'd love to say that I like this more than I do. For every instance that the title lands on something good, however, it's followed in short order by something that again lowers my esteem, or vice versa. I entered with low expectations, though I admit some part of me was hoping that Matellano would show up Larraz to some degree just because I loathed the antecedent picture so much; could that yearning mean that my perception of this remake was unconsciously altered in its favor from the start? Even if that were the case - in the greatest spirit of generosity one could just overreach and perhaps say that this is "average," but if I'm being honest, it's still a hair below. There is value here, but it's set against a burdensome stack of detractions that prevent it from standing any taller. It's a shame, really; I recognize the potential of what this might have been, but in one fashion or another, it just can't achieve it. 'Vampyres' is mildly enjoyable if you come across it, and don't particularly mind when a film is overall Lesser. Unless you're desperate for more genre flicks, however, or an utmost fan of someone involved, I hesitate to even use the word "recommend" in connection with this.

It's nice to see a rare instance of a remake that genuinely improves on its predecessor. How much that really means, here, is up for debate.