Vampire + ballerina = ballerina vampire.
BQB here with a review.
SPOILERS ABOUND!!! Go watch it first if you don’t want SPOILERS.
3.5 readers, we’ve reached a crisis with movies lately. The new ones, on the whole, are so dumb, lame, and boring, completely made for the paint by numbers, cookie cutter world of streaming, that I rarely rent a film. If it got me to put my butt into a movie theater seat then usually it was worth it (though sometimes it wasn’t) but if it didn’t get me to go to the theater, then usually it is a waste of my time to rent it.
I have tried and more often than not, I usually end up checking my watch 10-20 minutes in, I pause it and check my tweets, I’m so bored I do anything else but watch it and before I know it, a day or two has gone by and I missed my rental window and who cares? I do because I’m out 20 bucks but otherwise that’s a movie I won’t bother with again.
But I’m glad I broke my no-rental rule for this one because I was on the edge of my seat the entire time and if you like horror, crime with just a very light tinge of dark comedy, I’d say it’s worth your time too.
The plot? A bunch of crooks have gotten together to kidnap the 12 year old daughter of a rich man and hold her for 50 million dollars ransom. They break into her father’s luxurious mansion right after she returns from ballerina practice, still in her costume.
At first, this seems like it will be an easy job, but soon the predators are turned into prey when they realize they have been locked into a safe house with…dun dun dun…a tiny vampire ballerina! As the lights dim and the sound track to Swan Lake plays, this tiny terror pirouettes and dances about as she sucks the blood of her tormentors.
PRO: It’s very original. Sure, there have been other movies in the past where crooks messed with the wrong guy or in this case, gal. But to my knowledge, none have done it with a vampire and done it this well so kudos.
CON: Understandably, movie trailers have to package and promote a snippet of what the flick is about. So I remember the trailers for this one going around earlier this year. I recall it being billed as group of people stuck in house with vampire ballerina and thought it was weird. Sometimes I wonder if group of people stuck in mystery house where bad unexplained things would be a good way to promote it and then let the audience enjoy the mystery and the big reveal.
For the first hour, the crew is picked off one by one and they are terrified as they try to figure out what is going on. Little bread crumbs are revealed. Possible red herrings as thrown, making the crooks think they have different, natural, human opponents until the big reveal comes when they realize their captor has pointy teeth and supernatural strength and powers. Without the trailers revealing their opponent was a vampire ballerina, it would have been quite a surprise but then again, the vampire ballerina is the movie’s big draw so of course they have to promote her.
One more complaint. I’ve ranted a lot on this blog about how, for the past 10 years or so, Hollywood has, IMO, crossed the line when it comes to kid actors, putting them into adult situations for the sake of petty entertainment. Here, young actress Alisha Weir is covered with blood and given creepy eyes and terrifying teeth, allowed to feast on victims and commit heinous acts of murder. That’s a lot for a kid but I suppose it’s been done before. We know its ridiculous and not really real. What I didn’t like was a scene earlier in the film where in the beginning, where we think Abigail is just a kid and not a vamp, one of the crooks puts a gun to her hand and she cries. I just didn’t think that was necessary and I didn’t want to see violence like that perpetrated against a kid on film even if it is make believe. get they are trying to establish these are bad people, but we already knew. They had stooped low enough to kidnap a child, after all.
The cast? A lot of newcomers I didn’t recognize as well as movie regulars like Giancarlo Esposito and Dan Stevens who it seems is in everything these days. Kevin Durand, who usually plays psychos and weirdos, doesn’t disappoint. Melissa Barrera plays the crook with a heart of gold.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy. If anything else, you’ll hear the sound track to Swan Lake more times than you can possibly shake a stick at.
HEY! I have a complaint about THE ENDING and IT CONTAINS SPOILERS so LOOK AWAY if you don’t want it SPOILED. If you did watch it already, then check it out.
So, we learn that Abigail is not just any old 12 year old but was actually frozen in time due to her vampirism several hundred years ago. Though she has lived for hundreds of years, she is forever trapped in a child’s body. Vampire flicks have explored this horror of horrors before, with Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire being a prime example. We learn Abigail’s “father” did this to her though we aren’t sure if her father is her actual father or her vampire father i.e did she have another biological father and her vampire father is the one who turned her into a vamp? Are they the same? Who knows?
At any rate, Abigail’s vamp father has been running an evil crime syndicate for centuries and posing as different crime bosses along the way and Abigail has taken the guise as his top enforcer, spreading the rumor that a monstrous hitman carries out the boss’ whims while in fact, his tiny vamp daughter does the murders.
Throughout the flick, Abigail revels in the murderous mayhem yet at the end, she seems to bond with Barrera’s character, Joey. You wonder maybe, for a brief moment, if Abigail wouldn’t like to be saved from this vile life of being a vamp mobster’s vamp hitman and maybe Joey could be her…I don’t know…aunt? Mother figure? Big sister?
So should the film have ended with Joey defeating Abigail’s vamp dad and saving Abigail? Ehh, maybe but then again, I got the impression maybe Joey thought about it, maybe even Abigail thought about it, and they just realized vamp dad would be a fight they couldn’t win and they had to go back where they belong, Joey to the human world, Abigail to the vamp crime world.
Bookshelf Battle 