Director: Dave Parker
Year: 2024
Country: USA/Italy
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Arriving in Italy for a Bachelorette Party, a group of girlfriends rent out a manor house in the city for their celebrations which soon revolves around bringing the club owner who rents out the house back to party with them but when they discover his vampiric nature must try to stop his deadly plans.
Review:
This was a pretty fun and generally solid genre outing. Among the better qualities here is the impressive work featured here that brings about a rather fun storyline. Managing to mix together a slew of general cliches into workable storyline beats, starting with the bachelorette party arriving at the remote castle-like manor house in a foreign country, the interpersonal relationships between everyone who all have their own backstory with the group to deal with, and the gradual reveal of the mysterious owner’s past that becomes incredibly more obvious the more it continues features a strong enough starting point here. The later points brought up here involving the discovery of his plan the more they remain at the house, from the mythical portrait that looks exactly like her to the arrival of the hunter going through the sacred artifacts trying to uncover the truth about the host and his minions, serves to further this overall setup quite nicely.
That leaves the film to be incredibly fun when dealing with the vampiric action featured throughout here. As there’s a solid build-up to that point in the first half where his attempts at worming into their party to allow his presence and try to win her over, the work here featuring the group hanging around the manor or heading out to the party that brings them in contact with the main vampire and his cronies makes for an intriguing setup which brings this into the fun final half where the vampiric activity takes place. With the creatures taking over the house and using their powers to run wild over the friends who are twisted and manipulated into falling victim to the creatures in several fun setpieces that utilize the folklore powers well. Including the amount of fine confrontations to try to stop them which brings some decent gore throughout this part of the film and some well-handled sensuality with the seduction attempts, these provide quite a lot to like here.
The film does have some issues here holding this down. The main drawback here is the series of obvious cliches utilized to try to tell this story but doesn’t do much to differentiate it from the pack by using them. The starting point of the mysterious woman arriving there trying to look for her missing daughter which never gets resolved, the group being unconcerned with their missing friend who’s never shown up, the painting featuring the one girl who’s a dead ringer for the friend, and the revelation about the hunter following them has all manner of familiar beats that crop up in so many other similar films makes it all feel quite familiar. The other problem here is a slightly confusing issue during the main party where the vampires start to take over and use doppelgangers of the group which is never explained if it’s a visual hallucination, manipulating the whole scenario, or a shapeshifting ability and it can make it hard to tell what’s happening since any of those factors being the culprit changes around the scenario drastically. Beyond these factors, it’s what drags this one down just slightly.
Overview: ***.5/5
A solid and enjoyable genre effort with a few small issues, there are some fun moments throughout here that allow this one to hold itself up over the few minor drawbacks it also has. Those who appreciate the style of indie effort or are curious about it will have the most to like while most others out there turned off by these factors should heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment