Undead It is sad when the idea presented in the prologue is not reflected in the rest of the timekeeping of the film, and the barely pecking sprouts of at least some plot appear only after the fortieth minute, turning a meaningless action into an even more senseless Tarantino-Rodriguez thrash, which, unfortunately, is not controlled by these same Rodriguez and Tarantino.
Effectively presented at the beginning of the film, the scene with a minor complexing about her own fate and lifestyle can lead to great delight and cause disgust with the same force, depending on the perception of the situation and the location of the viewer, but in fact, the whole modest prologue could become a completely independent short film, in detachment from all other framing, and only slightly more revealed in part of the text of the left note, it would look interesting production and sad art horror drama.
Everything that begins to happen next is just an allegory for modern society, not the fantasies of vampires. Blood is oil, around which the whole political fray flares up, and the deviation in the context of international relations and the struggle with one’s own nature firmly crushes the social part and at least some emotionality of what is happening. And the authors think it's right, what's the emotionality of vampire movies? Gone are the days of Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola and have long since outlived their Interview with the Vampire, as the best representatives of the genre turned to the ashes of the classics and do not crave a return to the real aesthetics of vampirism and a deviation into medieval mythology with thorough accuracy and aristocratic delights.
The Spearig Brothers did to vampire movies the same thing the Ostriches brothers did to Alien and Predator in Requiem. That is, they turned everything into a sterile senseless mess with an R rating, playing with the demonstrativeness of the world picture, they completely forgot that in the plot of the film it is still necessary to have a story, with the formulation of problems and at least a banal semantic motive. Inventing a vampire world is one thing, but making an interesting movie about it is quite another.
All the nonsense about the undead and poverty of blood reserves looks ridiculous and ridiculous: vampires here, we can say, keep knives of silver at home, and all the furniture they have, of course, aspen. The myth of garlic and crucifixion is completely forgotten, and even now they can drink their own blood.
Looking at the unfortunate Defoe, with disgusting unshavenness, which does not suit him very much and sometimes makes it difficult to recognize, you wonder what an actor of this level forgot in a second-rate cheap B-Movie?! But, when Sam Neal appears on the screen, the claims to Defoe fade before our eyes. Neil decides to play fun in his past, but not in the one where he brilliantly serves on the screen paleontologist Alan Grant, and in the unsuccessful triquel “Omena”, where he actually played Damien Thorne. The same Damien he builds out of himself now, though without devilish superpowers, but with vampire fangs. Having played absolutely no batch of screen furniture, Sam once again confirms that he is strictly forbidden to play negative characters, and the lack of persuasiveness and the plot-killed line with his daughter says that in the film not only the problems of talented actors, but also a talentless script, and besides, Isabel Lucas is negligible.
Maybe the vampire-Defoe, who, unlike Neil, such a role fits flawlessly, and would be able to pull out on his charisma and acting the hopeless sullenness of the boring production of “Warriors of the Light”, but the poor guy is not even given a plot place and screen time for such a case. Insignificant in terms of acting, but the most culminating for the whole story is a fragment of the hero’s past, insignificantly small and unable to make a ray of hope and become a lifeline on a sinking rusty barge loaded with a bunch of unnecessary and completely unnecessary scenes.
By the end of the massacre, overgrown with some plot-based goal, through the dynamics of action, turns into the third part of Blade, though without Blade himself, and therefore loses all its color and charisma in the absence of Snipes and in the presence of Defoe, Neil and Lucas who did not manifest themselves in any way. And after Spiriga famously played with "From dusk until dawn" showing Rodriguez techniques of meat entertainment, and certainly happy that the film still has something to see. Forty minutes showing some excerpts of the way of life in the world of vampires, the authors accidentally recall the plot, and from that moment all the biggest problems begin. Well, it would still turn the movie into a demonstrative and cognitive transmission of the channel “discovery”. If with zombies, such scales are not new for a long time, and vampires know how to think and talk - the situation is quite logical and interesting, but at the helm as always were the wrong people.
What can you expect from the directors of one of the worst, cheapest and dumbest thrash movies in history? We are talking about the previous work of the Spirig brothers – the film Undead. Taking a larger budget, they made the same “Anded” only with a mixture of famous actors, but thrash nonsense will be thrash nonsense, whoever played in it, and the inability to make a movie does not pass like a mild cold, and with the growth of capabilities and budget only progresses to a brain tumor, which is clearly observed in their new creation, because Daybreakers is just a clinical case.
And looking at how everyone around overestimates due to the presence in the film of their favorite Neil / Dafoe or cute Lucas, it becomes sad for the audience, who do not see the absence of any desire to play these actors in such talentlessness, and the actors themselves, forced, earning a living, to star in unclear.
A prequel about the very beginning of the infection and its spread, about the confrontation of crowds of vampires and ordinary people, about the seriousness and drama of the choice to become a convert or a donor, about the choice of parents regarding their own children who either will never grow up for a minute or will be torn to shreds by a hungry crowd, but should such a movie be made after the Warriors of Light turned directly? The question is very controversial, and in terms of the prequel and especially in terms of the continuation.
But there are some advantages even in a bad fake, posing as a movie. Visual effects do not cut the eye, the whole mass of dismemberments and bloodletting is made with love for their work, the final slaughter is worthy of a scratch on the desktop and even a modern picture with some philosophical name, and the makeup of vampire monsters came out no worse than the already mentioned above “Dracula” 1992 and the first “From dusk to dawn”, but the film lacks neither charm from the first nor comic from the second. Not fish, not meat, but some undead – and that’s all. Stupid, indiscriminate incompetence.
3 IZ 10
Original