Director: Steve Lawson
Year: 2010
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Running an exclusive nightclub, a London promoter preparing to open his new club finds that he's been cheated out of the location by a gang of vampires looking to use the property for their own means and forces him to get a gang together to reclaim what was his before the vampires spread into the city.
Review:
This was a pretty decent and enjoyable vampire effort. Among the more enjoyable factors here is the films' strong mixture of gangster crime thriller alongside more traditional genre elements. Managing to work rather nicely as a series of early exploits focusing on how he conducts business by showing the extras doing hits or backstage at the club's day-to-day duties sets this one up really nicely in that universe to get an idea of what's going on as a setup for the later takeover of the club that turns this around into more traditional genre fare at that point.
That brings about how the gradual discovery of their vampire background turns this into that kind of genre effort. The valiant yet futile march to reclaim the club that turns into a trap with the full reveal and battle with the vampires that shows them getting hollow victories before the change but then getting systematically and obviously overwhelmed and swarmed resulting in some brutal beatdowns with plenty of fun gore involved in the aftermath. Not only is the fighting hard-hitting and brutal, but the sight of the battles occurring while the dancers snack on disfigured body parts is quite an impressive sight.
That also gives the finale a lot to like as the survivors take the fight to the remaining vampires one last time. Wisely sidestepping two cliches in that there's no wait to regroup and reform a day later but charging back later that same day as well as taking out the traitor before he turns them, that they're forced to use some creativity and ingenuity to stop them is a far better way to go about this one. Getting some solid action here with the various battles between each other which puts those to good use and features some surprising outcomes as well as even more fine gore, there's quite a lot to like here.
This one doesn't have much to hold it back. The main problem is the rather confusing and baffling manner in which the vampires carry themselves. Rather than press the advantage over the demoralized crew, they try and belittle them to the point of drawing attention to themselves for how they're acting, which is even worse in the finale where they go about taunting and speechifying their superiority rather than going on. The other weird issue with the finale is several excessive scenes that are optional as it's focused on getting celebrity cameos that are optional. Otherwise, there's not a lot to hold it down.
Overview: ***.5/5
A generally fun vampire/gangster hybrid, there's a lot more than expected to enjoy with this one which manages to provide a lot to enjoy here that holds it up over the few drawbacks here. Those with an appreciation for this type of feature or are curious about it will have the most to like here while most others out there turned off by its flaws should heed caution.
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