This movie doesn’t suck and that’s about as nice a compliment I can muster up for the 600th vampire movie/tv show to come out in the last decade. I can’t say there’s anything all that fresh here–by now vampires are as cozy as Santa Claus, so familiar they are to us–but the movie does what it can.
What Works: Colin Farrell does a nice job, making his vampire funny, menacing, and the polar opposite of those dewey eyed kids on True Blood, Vampire Diaries, and the notorious Twilight. The movie’s underground ending is also rancid fun, and the film–to its credit–gets more inventive as it goes on.
What Doesn’t Work: The kid that played McLovin’ in Superbad isn’t good in this, and while most loved David Tennant as a reluctant vampire hunter I got annoyed with him. Still, the movie’s biggest problem is redundancy.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Not made this movie. There is that “Been there, done that” feeling the film can’t quite shake. No matter what happens in the movie or the exciting way it’s put together, there’s just not a lot different you can do with this genre. Plus, this film’s a remake making it doubly unnecessary. I think it’s time for Hollywood to invest in werewolves or banshees or hell, even Mermen because vampire movies (AND zombie movies) have run out of gas for about five years.