Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter, Dan Stevens
Director: Amy Heckerling
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy | Horror | Romance
Official Trailer: Here
Editor’s Note: Vamps opens in limited release tomorrow, and is now available on VOD
Vampirism must be hell for a socialite. That’s the basic springboard from which Vamps, the latest film from writer/director Amy Heckerling, launches, proceeding swiftly to dress a Sex and the City style story of fun-loving gals in the familiar garb of vampiric tropes. Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter are Goody and Stacy, young women “turned” in the 1840s and 1990s respectively, together learning to embrace this new life despite the latter’s ignorance of the former’s true age. Sworn off human feeding together with the others of their “Sanguines Anonymous” support group, the pair survive on the blood of rodents, until one of them strikes up a relationship with a young man by the name of Van Helsing.
The resultant stew of strategic demographic-luring tropes quickly steers the film away from the incisive analysis of feminine life it might have been toward a meretricious mess of lazy jokes and lazier romances, half-hazardly coated in the chic veneer of vampiric obsession.
Rated PG-13, Vamps seems evidently a film intent on a younger audience, yet so much of Heckerling’s comic style—in the abundance of cultural references relevant only to decades long passed—precludes the enjoyment of any such audience. And despite certain friskier sexual references peppered throughout its dialogue, it’s surely no movie meant for adults only, the cynical dumbing down of its content unmistakably tailored to teenage pandering. The resultant stew of strategic demographic-luring tropes quickly steers the film away from the incisive analysis of feminine life it might have been toward a meretricious mess of lazy jokes and lazier romances, half-hazardly coated in the chic veneer of vampiric obsession.
Vamps looks and feels in every way like a discarded television pilot, its cheap aesthetic affording it the visual flair of a low-rent sitcom, most particularly in the girls’ bedroom where (save for one brief reverse shot) a single angle captures the action. So reminiscent of the many such dreadful shows is the framing herein that it’s almost jarring to not hear canned laughter accompanying every vain effort at humour. It’s an experience akin to watching the last dying season of a series well past its sell-by-date stripped of its laugh track; in the absence of engineered reaction all we have left is the awkward silence—a muted cough perhaps, just to break the tension—as each subsequent gag fails to make the requisite impact.
It’s an experience akin to watching the last dying season of a series well past its sell-by-date stripped of its laugh track; in the absence of engineered reaction all we have left is the awkward silence…
What a film so devoid itself of any cinematic style or substance is doing haphazardly tossing about references to—or rather just excerpts from—esteemed classics the like of Nosferatu, Metropolis, The Public Enemy, and even Un Chien Andalou is a baffling mystery; other than perhaps boasting of her own viewing history, Heckerling seems to have no good reason to include so many scenes from these films, their inclusion only serving to constantly remind us of the great potential of this medium: the great potential going hideously squandered right before our eyes. Nothing better attests the redundancy of this clip show sensibility than a scene of logic-defying ludicrousness where Stacy educates her disinterested boyfriend on how The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, that masterpiece of German expressionism released in 1920, is a rich allegory for the evils of Hitler’s politics. Surely there’s irony in there somewhere. Surely.
For all that Vamps seems to suggest otherwise, Heckerling is not a filmmaker without talent; amidst the flurry of groan-worthy lines she lands a gag every now and then, and televisual though it is there’s an economy to her direction, neatly avoiding the garish, if only in favour of the mundane. Even with a story so limited, and a production so apparently subject to commercial concerns, she has with this cast—Malcolm McDowell and Sigourney Weaver her obligatory big name “with” and “and” respectively—the room to bestow upon her target audience, whomever they may be, some silly fun. In the end, as pressing a question as who it’s for is what it’s for: Vamps is but a stale confluence of two staid formulae, a pandering vampire romance met with a brainless chick flick.
[notification type=”star”]30/100 ~ AWFUL. In the end, as pressing a question as who it’s for is what it’s for: Vamps is but a stale confluence of two staid formulae, a pandering vampire romance met with a brainless chick flick.[/notification]
