Stake Land

  I could taste it, and it tasted so damn good! Right up until the end, this movie had me salivating with its near perfect blending of the post apocalyptic and vampire film genres. Reminding me a good deal of what a mixture of The Road and John Carpenters: Vampires might look like. But there were a few minor issues toward the end of this one that kept it off my all time list.

  Nick Damici plays the quietly charitable and heroic vamp slaying "Mister" and in doing so became one of my favorite post apocalyptic lead men to date. The rest of the cast pulled their weight as well, villains, monsters and survivors alike.

  The story here is well written and inventive, full of commentary on how humanity and religion could (and most likely will) play a large part in how things will unfold once society crumbles. Showing that not only do we need fear the "plague" itself (or whatever catalyst may bring about our end), but also we must fear those who believe that "plague" is their gods will. It made for some highly entertaining story lines and created a world outside of and around what the main characters were dealing with at any moment. At points you could almost forget about the vampires as they became almost a backdrop for the larger issues of human on human violence.

  The vampire make-up was well done, not amazing but welcome considering they looked more like animalistic vamp/zombies than a bunch of stylish pasty faced "dreamboats" for once. The violence was rather hit and miss featuring some great stuff mixed with some no-nos, namely a couple of scenes that had obviously computerized bloodspray, but all in all it was fairly solid stuff.

   The only real issue I had with this film was the break in consistency near the end in which one of the vampires suddenly has reasoning and speech capabilities whereas every other bloodsucker in the film is dumb as rocks and basically frenzied beyond any capabilities of anything resembling revenge. And the Bond villain-esque explanation given was pretty unconvincing.

    Despite the couple of small issues I had with this one, all things considered this was a damn good movie that I would suggest that everyone dedicate an hour and thirty eight minutes of their life to. Adventure, vampires, religious freaks and the apocalypse? duh......

7.5/10 detached retinas