Director: Maritte Lee Go
Year: 2021
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Living in a poor section of the city, a teenage girl finds that her community has been invaded by a coven of vampires looking to feed off the poor and weak in the area to gather their numbers into a war against humanity, and gathers her friends to fight back alongside other vampires looking to stop them.
Review:
This was a highly enjoyable and worthwhile vampire effort. Among the more likable features here is the incredibly complex and involved setup that provides a launching point for the vampire activity to come from. With the early introduction to the mother and daughter living in their run-down community barely getting by and being forced to rely on her studies to provide a way out of their environment, the contempt for being around her friends who she likes but doesn’t really appreciate their lifestyle and the general unease with the authority figures in the community telling her what’s going on with her life all, this ends up making for a highly-convoluted story that sets everything up rather well. Alongside the main storyline, the idea of how she and her group of friends come together without any prejudices to help her makes for a rather likable time here.
That setup allows this one to have a lot of fun with the vampire attacks that take place. Starting off immediately with the first attack on the homeless man who’s swarmed and tackled viciously to start this off in grand fashion, the attacks here have a lot to like. The fact that there’s plenty of evidence to show their savageness by just immediately swarming a victim and just taking them out in massive sprays of bloodsplatter creates a highly enjoyable time here by making this one feature some threatening and imposing creatures. Combined with some highly enjoyable ideas about their lore involving the targets they select and how they manage to go about hiding in the community through several of their powers being displayed to help conceal their identity there’s a lot to like here involving the creatures.
On top of this, there’s also a lot to like about the final half here where this one reveals the final plan of the master vampire which gives this quite a lot to like. Offering the kind of rational explanation that sounds logical and quite reasonable to where we almost want to be on his side regarding the use of racial injustice and reform into a major part of his plan for taking over the citizens. It nearly paints him as a sympathetic figure doing it in a back-handed way to help strengthen and enhance the community, although this comes off way too late in the film to have the kind of effect it really should’ve. Likewise, it also signals the overall brevity of the final fight between the two who finally come face-to-face with each other in the closing minutes so there’s no sense of the epic final boss fight this is trying to give. However, these are minor quibbles overall.
Overview: ****/5
A highly enjoyable and entertaining vampire effort that offers up plenty of fun and exciting aspects in a rather tired genre, this emerges as an easy highlight in the scene and manages to give off some likable feel. Those who are fans of the genre or style, the creative crew, or just interested in the setup should give this one a shot, while those who don’t appreciate any of those factors should heed caution with this one.
This review ran as part of our 2023 Women in Horror Month celebrations. Click the banner below to check out the rest of our month-long celebrations including various reviews and interviews:
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