69. Vampire (Shunji Iwai, 2011) - From the director of two of the best films about teenagers ever made, All About Lily Chou Chou and Hana and Alice, Vampire is an idiosyncratic art film. It was Iwais English language debut, premiering at Sundance in January of 2011. It was so poorly reviewed that it barely even got released theatrically anywhere (only in Japan, as far as I can tell), and only recently became available in America via Amazon download. The truth is, it is a disaster. Thankfully, though, its a very interesting disaster. With expectations adjusted accordingly, I liked it, at least a bit. Kevin Zegers plays a high school biology teacher who has a secret life as a serial killer called the Vampire because he drains his victims blood. His victims, though, are consenting, wishing him to help them commit suicide. His pretenses are generally false - they believe hes going to commit suicide alongside them (or, alternately, that hes going to use the blood for scientific research on suicidals), but he is a gentle man. He actually believes himself to be a vampire, or maybe he wishes he were one, and he drinks the blood afterward. The film is often lovely - aided by a gorgeous, ethereal musical score by Iwai himself. There are a couple of killer sequences, particularly the films only real horror sequence, where Zegers is forced to accompany another serial killer (Trevor Morgan) as he hunts and murders a woman by suffocating her with a plastic bag. Of all the deaths Ive encountered in movies this past month, this was by far the most terrifying to me, with the woman just left to stumble around trying to escape her plight. The real failure of the film comes with the subplot involving Zegers Alzheimers-ridden mother (Amanda Plummer), whom he keeps from wandering out of his apartment by attaching giant, white balloons to her. This feels like something out of a terrible indie comedy (well, it did premier at Sundance!) and it just never works. There are a lot of other instances of people just not acting like real people ever would. 6/10.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 10:39:44 +0000
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