Director: Jem Garrard
Year: 2024
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Vampire
Plot:
Arriving at a remote bar, a group of drag queens mistakenly sent there to perform soon find themselves under attack by a gang of vicious vampires looking to use the bar as a feeding ground and must use their performing skills to save the hostile group from being killed by the creatures.
Review:
Overall, this was a massively fun and enjoyable genre effort. One of the better features here is the standout storyline that manages to offer up an incredibly likable storyline throughout. With the fun reasoning involving how they get mixed up with their next performance and wind up at the remote bar where the group is forced to put on their usual stage show for a group of bikers that are decidedly not their target audience but will perform for them anyway has a lot of fun work. Making the group as effervescent and high-spirited as they are which contrasts greatly with the more down-to-earth and grizzled compared to their rowdy and rambunctious regulars works nicely as the series of snappy comebacks and flashy choreography contrasted against the rough bikers is a great overall concept.
This provides the kind of exciting and thrilling action to come about here involving the kind of spirited confrontations between the conflicted group and the growing vampire horde. Knowing that something is wrong from the beginning with the early action scenes of the vampires coming along into the bar and starting to cause trouble that announces their presence. The series of interactions involving the performers being far more capable and handy with barricading the establishment to keep them out and in self-defense to protect themselves gives everything a highly enjoyable air as the home-made weapons and tactics to prevent the creatures from taking them out. The confrontations here are kept mainly fun and lively yet still present the vampires as massive threats with the reliance on traditional imagery and tactics that offer up the kind of frenetic fights full of some decent ideas and solid gore gags for the splashy kills. These all offer up the best aspects of this one.
There are some elements to this one that hold it back. Among the biggest drawbacks to this one is the unnecessary storyline about the confrontational nature of the performers getting in each other’s faces over the leadership role in the situation. This takes place at such a point in the film where it makes no sense why anyone would want to challenge the established nature of what’s going on based on everything that’s been going on so it just screams as something that comes about merely for storyline contrivance to beef up the running time dealing with the outcome of the desertion that means nothing in the long run anyway. As well, there’s also the film’s rewriting of vampire lore to suit the needs of a scene, whether it’s venturing out in daylight, not requiring stakes in the heart to effectively kill them, or turning some while feasting on others without any discernible means of attack. It does create a bit of an odd setup at times but never really holds the film down too much.
Overview: ****/5
A generally fun if overall by-the-numbers genre effort, this one manages to remain quite fun even when its few flaws are used to hold it back just slightly from what it could’ve been. Those who are intrigued by this style of film or are unbothered by the flaws on display will have the most to like here while those who are turned off by its issues will want to heed caution.
Comments
Post a Comment