 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: Bloodsucking Bastards • Year: 2015 • Country: USA • Director: Brian James O’Connell • Main cast: Fran Kranz, Pedro Pascal, Joey Kern • Runtime: 86 minutes • Production company: Fortress Features, MTY Productions • TRAILER |
Horror comedies, what a complicated genre. Because it is so easy to fall into the land of easy dumb jokes and get a silly ridiculous production in exchange of something fresh. And that is what Bloodsucking Bastards tries to be, a fresh and funny crossover between horror and comedy. And I think they almost made it.
After watching the film, you can’t help but to think you just saw a mix between Shaun of the Dead (2004) with vampires instead of zombies, the TV series The Office (not so much the british one, closer to the american version, 2005–2013) and the final slaying of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996). With a few really funny moments but nothing much more.
Because the plot is extremelly absurd and the situations are taken so much to the limit that at the end they are far from what might be found in a reagular office day. Still, what could be a huge and unwatchable absurdity turns into something likeable. And it all is thanks to a big chemistry between the characters and a dynamic direction. No mater how absurd they are, but the dialogs are freshly performed and the actors understand since the very beginning into what kind of production they are.
It is easy to imagine the pretensions from the filmmakers were not to make a masterpiece that would last forever in the minds of the viewers. To the contrary, probably the main goal was to make an enjoyable product with the only intention of entertaining and having a nice time. Bloodsucking Bastards is not a stupid amateur film, bad done and with pathetic acting like many other movies out there. But we have to understand it for what it is, a kind of funny joke with vampires and blood. But hey, that’s ok for me. I expected it much worse.
Sometimes, it is because movies like Bloodsucking Bastards that then you realize how great other similar ones are, and why they got stuck in our heads for so many years. How immense the direction skills of Edgar Wright are, and how great is the chemistry Simon Pegg and Nick Frost is. But for good and for bad, this is not Shaun of the Dead (2004). And sorry for mentioning so much a movie that is not the one to be reviewed today here, but it is very very inevitable to compare them. See Bloodsucking Bastards and you’ll know what I mean.
RATE: 6/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3487994
