The Radleys

The cast are good. That's not the problem. It's what the film does with them that is the problem.

The parents discovery in the Forrest was chilling and touching. But the lead up to it was cliche and predictable. This level of lazy story telling would be the theme.

The film had glimpses of being different. Yet the execution was incredibly dull and non sensical. So many scenes require a huge disconnect from reality. The plot holes being big and plenty.

As for the story. Well there wasn't really anything I would call clever, interesting or new. It just zombie walked from one dull slow boring scene to another.

The climax was painfully obvious and poorly done. No tension. No logic. No effort. All very silly and pointless.

These actors deserved more. So did the viewer.

Not recommended.

The Radleys are a highly thought of, upstanding family in The community, but they hide a dark secret, they're vampires. Their solidarity and normal life ends when the younger members learn who and what they are.

I was seriously looking forward to this film, the list of names, Euros Lyn, Kelly Macdonald and the wonderful Damian Lewis.....sadly the realisation was lacking.

It wasn't funny enough to be a comedy, wasn't dark enough to be a horror, not was it clever enough to be a thriller, it just made for amiable enough background noise.

Lewis clearly had a bit of fun playing two parts, but ultimately it was a waste of his talents.

Are we really now in the age of The Vegan Vampire, it was always going to happen, as a child I used to love Count Duckula, the only Vegetarian vampire duck, even he'd struggle with this one.

Disappointing.

5/10.

In even-paced contemporary British vampire flick "The Radleys" Kelly Macdonald & Damien Lewis, with teen kids Bo Bragason & Harry Baxendale, seem a regular middle-class Yorkshire-coast family... til the kids learn (the hard way) that they're actually all vampires (albeit abstaining ones). Lewis' active-vampire bro (also played by Lewis) comes to help them through this tricky period, but makes matters worse (drawing in suspicious neighbour Shaun Parkes, fearing for the safetly of son Jay Lycurgo). Director Euros Lyn & writer Talitha Stevenson may want it to be the first of a new "Twilight"-esque franchise, but it lacks the requisite bite, flair and style for that. Mediocre.

An attempt at bringing something new to the vampire canon but literally bites off more than it can chew with a story that progresses to an absolute snore fest of disinterest and unwelcome turns. Literally no element of the story pays off and the telegraphing of the eventual and obvious ending provides little more than a very basic resolution to a story that will age like old milk. It's well made and the cast are admirable in an obvious attempt to be part of some sort of subversive take on the vampire genre, unfortunately it will be forgotten and make barely a blip with any dark horror fan. If the writers had spent more time trying to properly build the intrigue with the ex policeman and his attempt to discover the truth about his wife or explored how they covered their tracks or their mind control powers rather than shelving literally every element in effort to push what is a really weak narrative with all the obvious modern tropes and gay/bi characters. It's a streaming title for those with a non critical take on film and enjoy Damien Lewis, saying that I do feel that Kelly Macdonald needs to avoid these type of roles because she seems almost typecast in them. As a movie, it's in the horror genre but is not scary or gory, it's also in the comedy genre without being funny, it isn't edgy, far from intriguing and not overly entertaining, just a movie that showed some potential but proved to be nothing more than 'just a good trailer' because at its core it treads an obvious path that others have been down thousands of times before. I marked it down because it seems to aim for such mediocrity, it almost feels like it had more to offer and got lost in the edit.

Matt Haig was recommended to me this year and I've read little else since. His non fiction books such as reasons to live are a must and really resonate, The Midnight library was brilliant too (fiction). Being a lifelong horror (and especially vampire genre) fan to boot m, I therefore refused to follow our house rule of not watching anything less than a 6/10 IMDb rated film, I subsequently had to go solo and ultimately paid the price for deviating. This is a poor adaption of the what is one of Matt's less engaging books and with too much background missing and story changes to appease some misguided social duty it really misses the mark. I gave it a 5 as I could appreciate what it should have been having read the book, however if you went straight in to the film I think it would be less. I really hope future film adaptions of his books are more worthy as he is a fantastic story teller and human being!