In Yorkshire, UK, Helen and Peter are a husband and wife have two mid-late teens, Clara and Rowan. They are also Vampires, who have abstained from their life.
When Clara’s ‘becoming’ commences, Peter calls his identical twin brother Will, who lives more welcoming of his ‘vapirism’ to assist.
Cast/Characters
Kelly Macdonald plays Helen, Damien Lewis plays Peter/Will, Bo Bragason plays Clara and Harry Baxendale plays Rowan.
Breakdown
The film was directed by Euros Lyn a UK television director.
With no real “main” character – the family each have a mini arc throughout the film.
Peter, a doctor is rather bland – and doesn’t really have much involvement in the story.
Helen seems to pine for her “old days” and a mid movie revelation about who ‘sired’ her makes some essence of sense to why she is so reluctant to have Will come help. It’s Will. Will sired her.
Clara, who’s story begins by (almost) being r*ped, killing her attacker – and then ‘coming into her existence. However the killing of the boy is never mentioned again after the first act.
Rowan secretly loves his neighbour Evan from afar. Evan is Clara’s best friend. I actually found this ‘relationship’ growth to be the best part of the film. It was genuine and organic. It was marred by the third act when Will, who is seemingly a nice and pleasant character, despite being a vampire, attacks and nearly kills Evan – so Rowan has to ‘turn’ him.
This just made no sense, and I have no idea why it was included.
Some of the editing is done poorly, so characters who have never been introduced (Clara and Will for instance) are now aware of each other. (Will is introduced to Rowan for the first time, and within minutes of screen-time – when Clara is being interviewed by the police, their first on screen moments, she is already comfortable with him following a off the cuff remark to Noah about her ‘uncle teaching rowan about old music’.
Why make him a long lost relative if you don’t expand on that??
Other additions don’t make sense either, such as Evan’s dad being cautious of the world – and aware of vampires (just because?) the geography chops and changes (it is a small coastal town, but there is a huge nightclub?), characters are introduced to be either a distraction or obstacle (Lorna with her lust for Peter) for it to go nowhere, and some inorganic dialogue that people would likely never really say (Evan’s nonchalance comments about his mother).
Overall
As there is original source material in a novel, I feel like too much must have been omitted from there, as the end result of this film was done poorly.
Give this one a miss.
1.5/5
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