At the end of last month, I had far too much bandwidth left and a surfeit of free time due to a bit of a SNAFU regarding the bookstore I just purchased. I thought to myself, what a grea time to catch up on all of those movies that have come out recently about vampires that weren’t written by Stephanie Meyer, and other miscellaneous Japanese schlock horror. So I popped over to the BigPond movies site, as my local VideoEzy that was choc full of Korean porno closed last year, and just searched for “vampire”… This was my first mistake, as the fist movie that wasn’t part of the Twilight series to show up was Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant.

I can only presume there was an emphasis on “ass”, because that’s about as much as was being alternatively sucked or kissed by the central protagonist, Darren.For a start, it needs to be pointed out that Cirque du Freak is actually a sub-series of a greater ongoing series written by an Irish guy that happens to have given his central protagonist his own pseudonym. I’m not too sure, but it’s almost on par with Stephen King writing himself into the Dark Tower series as some sort of pre-deterministic god for Roland and his followers insofar as autofellatio goes. The cinema adaptation of The Vampire’s Assistant (which is technically not even the first book in the series, but was probably the title of the first film simply to cash in on the teen vampire craze and make sure people knew what was going on, like the retitling of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone) has also clearly been setup to be part of an ongoing series. However, it’s pretty clear that the actors involved aren’t going to be able to keep up with the pace of filming required to actually make it happen, unlike said Potter series.

But let’s get into the film itself, shall we?

Never mind the terrible casting of Chris Massoglia as Darren Shan. It’s the terrible acting we should be worried about. It’s like the casting director wanted someone with the looks of a really young Ashton Kutcher, but all the social retardation of Michael Cera, but couldn’t figure out where to draw the line. Chris used to be a model for TV commercials. He’s actually a decent looking kid. It’s just that he happens to be about as wooden an actor as Nicolas Cage on a bakery OD. At least he’s saved by an eccentrically cast John Reilly as Crepsley (the vampire)… and in my mind, he bears a striking similarity to Burton’s Mad Hatter when it comes to costuming (Who said Burton was running out of original ideas?! I’ll fuckin’ shiv you with this black and purple curly thing!). There are also a few nice surprise castings, such as almost-falling-out-of-her-top-which-was-hot-15-years-ago-Salma Hayek, Ken Watanabi as the head of the freaks, and Willem Dafoe.

Of course, the problem with this film doesn’t really have much to do with the casting, or the poxy camera work and woeful CGI (seriously, just paint an actual tarantula!).

The problem with this film is that I, and probably anyone over the age of 14, is too old for this shit. The vampires are “good vampires”, and as such relegated to being really lame in terms of what they do (not killing people, running really fast, and having amazingly bad breath). The blood suckers that get all the cool shit, they’re the “vampinese”… like some kind of asian vampire… like Aswangs… don’t urinate on them or they cry.

The plot holes, the inconsistencies, the general stupidity of the actual characters. It all smacks of that R.L.Stine / Christopher Pike school of writing “horror” for the tweenage market where the author assumes that a) no one else is ever going to read / watch it and b) the audience they’re writing for is so stupid that they’re not going to notice problems like this… and c) all that crap can neatly be warpped up by throwing in CGI characters that are really cute knock offs of Gollum.

If I was a 13 year old girl that hadn’t yet discovered that I could con older men into buying me shit for just going onto a webcam, I’d probably watch this movie, and I’d probably give it 2 stars.

As I am not the above, I give this a half erect spinning blue penis.

Oh fine you cry babys, here’s a hot anime vampire. If you watch the series, just make sure you play the game of taking a shot for every panty shot. And for everyone else asking why I keep bringing anime up in this one… They made a manga series out of the books to tie in with the film release.

You might also like to read:

1. Teenaged vampires DON’T suck… they’re just lame
2. Australian Vampires Suck

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