[31 Days of Halloween 2015: CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT is now available on
DVD, Blu Ray, and On Demand.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
*Note: As with last year’s 31 Days of Halloween marathon of
horror movie reviews, we’ll be diving deep into the new release section looking
for modern horror fare, hoping for the best, but frankly expecting the worst.*
Some day I’ll
really regret not giving CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT a higher rating. Ivan Noel’s
Argentinian dark-comedy vampire flick has chintzy digital production values that come
through glaringly even on the small screen. Yet it boasts an imagination
quotient and wit higher than its budget. When a blockbuster $100 million Hollywood
remake opens in the multiplexes (its pointless sequels already posed to compete
with INSIDIOUS 4 MEETS LAST EXORCISM 6 in causing teen riots at the Cinemark
Valley View), I’ll really, really miss the hominess of this original, which was concocted under the title LIMBO.
That’s the name
of a curious rural orphanage outside Buenos Aries, visited by big-city
journalist Alicia (Sabrina Ramos), in one of those roles that I fear influences
too many of us to become underemployed journalists; she just sort of goes on
the adventure and never seems at all concerned with deadlines or writing or
stuff. Really, for much of the movie I thought she was a visiting nurse).
Children at Limbo all suffer from a “photosensitive” disorder that keeps them dormant
during the day, but fully active, healthy tykes, playing in the yard at night.
When Ana
recognizes kids from old missing-children posters, and one face familiar even
from her own childhood, she is told that, yes, these are all juvenile vampires,
from toddlers to adolescents. Some are, despite appearances, many decades old.
They were all bitten and exsanguinated at one time or another by irresponsible
adult vampires (which, we are told, is an undead indulgence no different than
mortal human gourmands eating veal). Now ageless bloodsuckers, the children
are guarded and carefully raised in an atmosphere of sort-of-innocence, roughly
according to Catholic Church strictures. Though encouraged to only drink animal
blood – at first - they remain dangerous nonetheless.
But on the
outskirts of the property lurks a black-clad squad of vampire-slaying grownups,
and these folks, Alicia realizes, are worse. Fortunately, Limbo has a
particularly powerful defender.
Sure, one could
read themes into this of the notorious death squads endemic to South America,
particularly urban Brazil, where grassroots militias are known to simply
exterminate unwanted street children in Rio. But Noel’s heart is closer to
cleverly updating and revamping the old gothic-horror notions. Even the legend
of Dracula makes a juicy plot element, whilst Bram Stoker is dismissed as a
closeted vampire who disguised his shameful origins via writing anti-vampire
propaganda fiction. Noel’s two-hour plus running time is on the excessive side
and could have been tightened a little, though I could sympathize with the idea
that is his (voracious) baby and he couldn’t bare to trim it down.
If I were any
sort of gentleman, too, I’d give bonus points for the casting of the late Argentine
thesp Ana Maria Giunta as Erda, the matron and guardian of Limbo who schools
Alicia in what’s going on. It’s a great part, and, as behind-the-scenes extras
indicate, Giunta had to use a walker and was obviously in her last years when
this was filmed; odds are the remake casts a barely-over-40 Hollywood actress
in the same role – you know, such as Charlize Theron, an old bat like that.
The year 2015 has
been a good one for me for catching up on home-video with off-the-wall
vampires, with the knockout New Zealand mockumentary WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
and the moody cultural mashup A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, and my late imbibing
of Jim Jarmush’s lyrical ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (not to mention the near-dead
local economy pretty much sucking my own life away). LIMBO/CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT may
just bring up the rear of that bunch, but it’s worthy of being mentioned in
their company, and genre fans will drink it up.
Much as they’ll
stand in line for a costly English-language remake whilst making small talk about
how correct President Trump was to keep all those Latino types out of the US; what could such brown-skinned people
possibly have to offer? (2 3/4 out of 4 stars)
No comments:
Post a Comment
We approve all legitimate comments. However, comments that include links to irrelevant commercial websites and/or websites dealing with illegal or inappropriate content will be marked as spam.
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.