Director: Charlie Steeds
Year: 2020
Country: United Kingdom
Alternate Titles: After Dark
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Going out with friends, a woman meets a seductive female vampire in the nightclub they frequent and is taken home, but when she awakes the next day with a strange infection and superhuman powers she realizes she’s become infected with a strange disease that turns victims into bloodthirsty vampires.
Review:
This wasn’t too bad of an effort. One of the better features of this one is the wholly enjoyable setup that manages to get everything together rather nicely. Getting the virus released from the beginning by showing the escape from the research facility and seeing it take over the community in the aftermath of the attacks that the officers are investigating is a nice tie-in, much like how it connects to the group with a pretty nicely-woven double inclusion with both the roommate’s boyfriend being the investigating officer as well as the group seducing her by themselves.
There’s also quite a lot to like in how the virus spreads and gets involved in the community. Acting like a zombie virus with the infected getting attacked and then developing a bacterial infection that denotes who the culprit is and that they have it, this becomes quite intriguing with the inclusion of those aspects into a vampire storyline. As she begins to change and transform into one which denotes the kind of film this really is even with the new build-up about what’s happening to her, there’s a lot to like with how this turns her into these beings quite gradually.
The other factor to really like here is the fun action and setup featured in the finale where everything comes together. With the full reveal of the virus and how they’re transmitted to the next victims, the storyline moves into a solid series of action scenes that show the growing powers and confidence of the vampire coming to fruition against the invading swarm of officers looking to take them out. This is a solid action setup that gets quite a lot to like with the screaming vampires coming out of the shadows causing tons of chaos which results in some nice action and gore, holding this one up for the most part.
There are some big issues featured in this one. The main problem is the seemingly scattered storyline that takes quite a while before it fully reveals the intention of what's going on. Although it has a lot to like with the throughline of the various storylines, that doesn't occur until quite late in the film making it appear as a rather random series of events for the longest time. The other issue here is the seemingly human vulnerabilities of the vampires, who are taken out with simple gunshots and nothing else which goes hand-in-hand with their ability to walk in sunlight that's never explained. These are the main issues holding this one down.
Overview: ***.5/5
An enjoyable if slightly flawed British vampire effort, there's a lot to like here that helps to make for a solid enough time here even if some of the drawbacks on display are quite prominent. Those who appreciate this kind of feature or are fans of the creative crew will be the main audience here while most others turned off by these factors should heed caution here.
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