The Thompsons (2012)

I've been waiting for this movie ever since I heard a rumour about it on the net -  and then promptly forgot about it, because my memory is shitty when it comes to things that don't exist yet which I have to remember for a (somewhat remote) future. Now it's here, now I was able to watch it, and now I can safely say that I am not disappointed at all.

First things first: If you haven't watched The Hamiltons, this movie will bring you much less joy than it does if you have watched it. The protagonists / main characters aren't explained or given a lot of characterisation - in fact, there's pretty much none of that. Besides for a quick "this is me, these are the twins, this is my oldest brother, and this is my little brother" via voice-over, don't expect anything on the protagonists. Then again, this is perfectly acceptable - characterisation happened in the first movie, and if you want to know who the people are that you're watching, go and watch The Hamiltons. It's fucking worth it.

We start out with Francis (Cory Knauf) in a box... looks like he's been buried.

The narrative is being told in a pretty interesting way - it practically starts over three times, which may make it appear a bit confused in the beginning. However, this style of storytelling actually serves to heighten the suspense and makes it much more interesting than if it had been told straight from the beginning of the story. Very well done, Butcher Brothers. I already liked your previous movies, but this takes the cake. It's not just serving us a simple story from the beginning to the end - it's starting right somewhere in the middle, runs with it, then turns around and starts again earlier, runs with that, and then turns its back on us in order to start once again. And for some reason it works. It works really well. Kudos to the guy(s) who came up with that idea - in this day and age, we're all too used to straight storytelling. Something more complex like this is very much welcome: The story becomes much more interesting this way, and the viewer is sucked into the narrative straight on. The voice-overs (all of them by the main protagonist, Francis, played again by Cory Knauf) also help to intensify the experience.

The narrative told in this movie is that of our beloved monstrous family trying to find others of their kind in "thee olde worlde", which is USA-speak for Europe. It's not directly picking up where The Hamiltons left us - at least 6 years have passed. Francis has grown up admirably, Wendell (Joseph McKelheer) gained some weight, Darlene (Mackenzie Firgens) has a new haircolour (and did she lose weight?!), David (Samuel Child)  is less stuck up in his ass, and Lenny (Ryan Hartwig) actually became a member of the family that's not locked up in a cage.

Other things haven't changed that much, though: The twins (Wendell and Darlene) are still slightly psychotic (enjoyably so!), Francis still broods, and David still has some kind of idea about American family values to be held up. Together with their Need for human blood, the family values they all share are the reason why the Hamiltons / Thompsons are not in their native USA anymore but instead chose to haunt good ol' Europe.

Why? Well, after an incident on the road (people were eaten and killed, not really sure in what order, as we're talking about my beloved family of vampiric miscreants here) during which their youngest brother was severely injured, which resulted in them having been forced to leave the US. I just say "vampire killings"*... these resulted in the family ending up in Europe - separated, searching for others of their kind with their little brother Lenny hovering on the brink of death.
The twins went to France, David (+ Lenny) and Francis went to the UK, all of them (supposedly, in the case of the twins) trying to find ...well, others like them who can help them with keeping Lenny alive. After all, being (living) vampires and all that, they can't just march up to a hospital and ask for help. I guess(?).

Lots of people seemed to think that The Hamiltons wasn't a proper or even good vampire movie due to the lack of fangs and neck-biting (or so I gathered from discussions and reading reviews). The Thompsons does definitely not suffer from this. It's overdoing the whole vampire-angle at some times in my opinion (RRRAAAAAH! FANGS! RRRAAAAAH! RED EYES!! RRRAAAAH! JAWS!!!), but hey - I'm a fan of subtlety when it comes to certain genres of horror. Nonetheless, it's a great fucking movie. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of The Hamiltons**, and this is a GREAT sequel.

It brings up the question of the monstrosity of our protagonists again - "we need blood to survive. Our disease makes us kill to live. We're that kind of monster."

The topic is brought up in a different way than in the first movie, though. We are still watching the narrative mainly through the interpretative lens of Francis - but unlike in The Hamiltons, he has grown up, and this is reflected in the narrative.

It is also reflected in the acting; Cory Knauf - although I still think he mostly plays himself - has definitely gained weight as an actor (not in the physical sense!). His portrayal of Francis is much more nuanced than in The Hamiltons. 

Here, we have acceptance of the monstrosity that defines our protagonists. It's not Francis whining on about why his family sucks, why his family and life is horrible or why he feels horrible anymore. He grew up and learned to accept that he will never be a normal human being, will never have (normal) human friends and a normal human life. It is the acceptance of the inevitable, the acceptance of how horrible life can be whilst still making something out of it. Whilst still creating a positive narrative for himself, against all odds, against all of the fucked up terror that is their blood-dependend existence.

Back to the plot:

Francis is told to travel to a small English town called Ludlow*** in order to find someone ('Masterson' -- heheh, nomen est omen, eh?) who could know how to keep Lenny alive - and how to live as a monster in this all too human world of, well, non-monstrous humans. Because let's face it: If you're not human and never were taught the human rules of the game of life, the rules of how to act around humans, you'll have difficulties fitting in without being noticed as being different. And being noticed as being different is bad.

Take eating food. At about minute 34 we're treated to a vampire family feast that is in no way what you'd imagine. The following dialogue takes place between the British vampire patriarch (a good but not outstanding performance by Daniel O'Meara) and Francis:

- "Haven't you trained your body to eat?"
- "I get sick. Don't you?"
- "Part of living among other in this world is presenting the idea that you're no different."
- "We put up our fair share of charades, but... There's nobody here..."
- "That's the lack of discipline that landed you here."

---- Agreed. But if no one ever tells you that not eating is weird and makes you suspicious in human eyes, you simply can't really know that, much less understand it. On that note: Yes, training your body to eat 'normal' food indeed makes people less wary of you. It's weird, I know.

Anyways - Francis is, after initial (weird!) problems that at times masquerade as rites of initiation, accepted into the vampire family he finds in Ludlow... and then everything foes horribly, horribly wrong. The family of others he thought he had found turns out to be... well. Quite elitist, to say the least, and not at all as friendly as he initially thought them to be. Vampire fights, woooot!
I'm not going to spoil this one, as the twist(s) are actually not foreseeable in their entirety and add to the enjoyment of the movie A LOT.

The Thompsons is not a gory movie, but it has its moments. It adds the topic of hunting for food, monster-on-human violence, human-on-human violence (aka 'serving dinner'), monster-on-monster violence, and rape. Could be considered tough shit for someone not as desensitised to violence as myself.

AND it deals with the whole family-thing we already know from The Hamiltons. This time, though, it's from two different points of view - that of the Hamiltons, and that of the British vampire clan. One wonders - would everything be so much different if the situation was reversed...?

Also, the interesting issue of being an outsider is raised again, just as they did in The Hamiltons. Francis and his family are outsiders to humanity; Francis is an outsider to his own family (or at least he was in the first movie)... and here, we see how it is to be an outsider within a family of monsters. A very good idea that not just implies but brutally shows the subjective nature of the concepts of 'normality' and 'outsider' - it all depends on what you define as 'normal' after all...

Sociologically sound, with a depth of social issues clad in the garb of vampire-horror that is hardly ever seen in vampire flicks or horror flicks in general. The Thompsons opens up the can of worms of multiple layers of social stratification within the realm of the monstrous, and that these layers interact with one another. It also touches upon the need for trust in (non-)human beings and how we all deal with betrayal - and it also deals with the nigh inevitable fact of betrayal as part of a stratified society when not knowing the rules that other people made up and you should, ideally, live by, without having any idea about the why and how. 

Something that definitely differentiates The Thompsons from The Hamiltons is that the story they create is actually a story worthy of a full-length movie. I did comment on the issue of how the original story of The Hamiltons isn't really material for a full movie in my review of that flick - and this time, they managed to actually come up with a story that fills this movie instead of milking one single assumption ('teenage-vampire-initiation-story') to the death in 80+ minutes. Kudos for that. 

Honestly, I expected this movie to be shit - and yes, I can look forward to a movie and still expect it to be shit. Gladly, the Butcher Brothers managed to thwart all of my fears, creating a well-crafted flick that deserves to be watched by more people than just hardcore (indie-) horror fans. Good script, good story, nice pictures, solid camerawork.

I would totally give this movie a *really* high score, if it wasn't for the CGI. It sucked. Seriously. It's most obvious with the fangs and jaws of the evil British vampires****. It truly doesn't look enticing. Maybe this is because I am not a big fan of CGI in general, however. The red eyes were irritating as well, to say the least.
Camera and cutting are consistently good, though. The one other point of criticism I'd have would be that I'd have enjoyed more of the twins, but then again, this movie is mainly about Francis (again!) and his interaction with the 'other' family of monsters. 

The ancient distinction between 'Us' and 'Them' is shown here once again - but, which makes it much more interesting than the normal Us vs. Them stories, this narrative takes place within the realm of 'Them'. I would be hard pressed to define blood drinking living vampires as 'Us', and I guess so would be everyone else watching this movie; out protagonist is, however, clearly one of 'Them' - and at the same time, by virtue of being our protagonist, one of 'Us'. I would so draw a diagram to illustrate the intricacies of differentiation between the concepts of the Inside and the Outside in this movie, but I shall spare you that. Yes, I am a wonderful person, I know.

7.95 / 10 torn-off faces in a French apartment

* Best. Comment. Ever. from voice-over Francis on the topic - "They called it the 'vampire killings', as if we were some stupid cult or passionate Twilight lovers...". I had to laugh out loud so freakin' hard. *winks at the target audience*

** And there will be a review of The Violent Kind!

*** Am I really the only one who sees a horror reference in that name?
**** One wonders whether this should be interpreted as a reference to the incestuous inbreeding-habits of the royal families of Europe and their at times monstrous regimes over the non-royals aka every-fuckin'-one else...

Ravenous (1999)

 You are what you eat.

This has long been due and awaited by a select* few, and tonight I am ready once again: Whilst wallowing in footnotes of a scientific nature and working my pretty ass off about topics no single remotely sane and especially 'normal'** person is interested in, I needed to occupy my creative multitasking with some visual input in order to actually concentrate on being a frelling out-of-work penniless genius who is being thought of as a weird, nerdy retard. Pardon my French. So the search for DVDs working on this glorious excuse for a laptop*** led to 'not-really-anything-working-besides-for-a-handful-that-I-have-already-watched-extensively' - as a result, thinning out the collection to what is available on one backup drive. This is a sore topic for me, as most of my DVDs are not working anymore, and most of my backups are A)**** on non-working peripheral drives, or B) dead internal drives in inaccessible impossible casings. Add C) non-accessible drives in dead motherboards and D) non-working broken DVDs as your personal level of Schadenfreude demands. It's easily possible to add E) non-working DVD-player to that - but as of recently, I can say 'thank you' to Maynard of horrormoviediary.net, who volunteered to send me a working external DVD-player. Thank you.

Still, the final solution in this case having been the handful of movies of which I have several backups - having been blessed with technological paranoia from an early involvement with it on -, I chose Ravenous to be the movie of the... day? Weekend? Don't know, don't care, but what counts is that Ravenous is one of those movies I can actually watch, so there we go - praise Dame Necessity.

First of all:
Robert J. Carlyle. OMG. Robert J. Carlyle.
Your hostess has to admit to going all fan-girl-y over that Scottish guy. His characters are always memorable - Colqhoun / Colonel Ives in this wonderful movie, the father in 28 Weeks Later (Hallêlu:-Fresnadillo/Boyle!), Dr. Rush in SGU (only thing saving that series, besides for the distinctly Farscape-esque touch of the story and the ship Destiny... srsly), .... and most recently, effing Rumplestiltskin in faerytale-smooch-drama-series Once Upon A Time (again, only saving grace of that thing - I do see a pattern here).

So. Ravenous. *toothy grin*

This is the story of a young man of the American military, Captain John Boyd (Guy Pearce), who has been sent to Fort Spencer, located in what has to count as pretty much the remotest areas of the Sierra Nevadas, for a reason made very clear at the very start of the narrative; there, he encounters a very archaic concept coming to life, threatening all - an archaic concept made manifest as a ravenous hunger... for human flesh.

(cue in cheering, applause and enthusiastic hooting of the doubtlessly huge crowd here for effect)

Captain John Boyd is a coward at heart. He managed to take an enemy post in a battle once (ah, yes: The movie is set during the time of the Mexican-American war - complete with in-period garb, which of course impressed me positively A LOT, being the historical-accuracy-nerd that I am), but that was under ...special circumstances. That was ...different. *grins toothily*
You see, he let himself be captured by the enemy (= evil Mexicans in this case) by 'playing dead' - he could not bear witnessing the deaths of all his men, and so he thought it would be a good idea to fake being dead. Wise choice indeed, considering that he found himself on a wagon loaded with the corpses of his fellow soldiers, buried underneath them. Getting their, ehm, inside-stuff into his mouth. Heh.

When a mysterious stranger who calls himself Colqhoun arrives at Ford Spencer shortly after Boyd has, our soldier does not know yet that his life will change completely under the influence of the remnants of his own past and the needs of the present. A horror movie with engaging and truly memorable, well-crafted characters! [rasping-hissing-guttural-reptilian noises] Happy squeal.

Without going too much into the background-end of movie-narratives, Ravenous manages to make every single character in this movie into a well-defined semiotic entity - stereotyped just enough to provide a starting point, but crafted into veritable personalities from quite early on (well... needs to be from quite early on, as some people kind of die. No, not peacefully, rest assured). There is simply no possibility to mistake one character for another, as it so often happens with modern horror flicks; in case you don't know what I mean, think back to the last movie you watched involving some person killing teenagers and/or young adults appearing in friend-circle-sized groups, maybe even one in which this happens outdoors, preferrably in some woodland area. If you should suddenly find yourself thinking about, I don't know, Friday the 13th or any other slasher movie from the past decades in which you find yourself mixing up the victims because they are simply flesh to be killed off, then you got the point I was trying to make. However - this movie. Oh my gods. This movie. Oh my gods.***** The characters are awesome. All of them.

Witness:

• The Stoner: Private Cleaves, an awesome performance by David Arquette. David Arquette! I really had not expected that.
• The Native (I - Stoner): George, convincingly played by Joseph Running Fox. The scene which touches upon catholicism is BRILLIANT.
• The Native (II - Female): Sheila Tousey plays Martha, sister to George the Stoner. Silent, tough.
• The Bookish Boss: Colonel Hart - Jeffrey Jones! His performance in this flick is just all-around nifteh. Like, seriously.
• The Aryan Übersoldier: Private Reich (lol), hilariously played by Neil McDonough. You can feel the aryan hardcore-ness emanating from the screen. Well played, Mr. McDonough, well played.
• The Religious Shy Nutter: Private Toffler, charmingly played by Jeremy Davies.
• The Alcoholic Doctor: Knox, portrayed by Stephen Spinella. Convincing. *nods* Convincing and funny, actually - but in this movie, the 'funny' (or should I make that 'amusing'?) kind of comes with the territory... which I fully approve of.
• The Naive Coward: Captain John Boyd, our very own lead.

...as I said. No single fucking way to confuse these characters with one another - visuals and voice are particular to each person. This is a good thing. Whilst I dislike the overuse of stereotyping in general, I welcome it as a device for storytelling - and let's face it, movies are narratives, therefore the rules of storytelling apply in a kind of way. Mhkay? Mhkay.

All of the characters are loveable in their own way, and you will no doubt have your favourite (and one you like the least...) - mine is, as readers familiar with my rantings and ...delicate distinctions on decadence, death and dismemberment as well as desiccating husks of dead things might already have guessed, the cannibalistic character, as played by - remember the elegies at the beginning of this review? x-actly - ROBERT CARLYLE (*swoons*). No one, I swear, no one plays the calculating wendigo beyond human behavioural patterns - and yet using these to his advantage by impersonating them to those who still suffer from them - like him: The original nightmare from which the variety of anthropomorphic monsters we have in our world's myths, sagas, stories, tales and bedtime whispers have spawned, the original dread to which all these pay witness.


It's one of us. 
  

As for anthropomorphic monsters of movie-land - I don't know how my esteemed readers feel about this, but I personally think that there's something archaic about a human eating another human. Satisfying. Basic. Or maybe it's that 'non-monstrous-looking people doing monstrous things to one another'-theme I have going on (-- my favourite topos, really)... anyways!

[I did want to add in some deeply philosophical stuff about why the stuff witnessed in this movie can be classified as cannibalism, followed by a deeply philosophical view on why most of the stuff can't be cannibalism for purely semantic reasons; let's just state that cannibalism would be the eating of one's own kind (as Cannibal Flesh Riot! taught us so well)... and the change from human to wendigo seems to be pretty straight and without any turns back to the olden road of not eating people. There, long philosophical point made.]


When looking at the atmospheric pictures Ravenous provides the viewer with, you have to figure in the soundtrack to delve into the whole movie-experience. I'd recommend a relaxing intoxicant of your personal choice if I ever did such things or would, indeed, even assume in my child-like naiveté that this would be something people would or could do without repercussion from the righteous, just and holy Law(s) [insert the Law(s) appropriate for your geographical area, religious persuasion, social stratum, education, gender, musical taste, movie preference, political persuasion(s), favourite drink, age range and relationship to cats here] for such a heinous act of malice, evil and brooding terror.
*nods sagely*

...feel free to crack open a cold one, though.

Enjoy *grins*

So... Soundtrack. Damon Albarn and Michael Nyman truly are AMAZING composers. I was a bit disoriented the first time I heard Nyman being mentioned on the cultural radio channel over here - Ö1 for those of you who keep track******, but quickly connected the name with this movie. Seriously - the man is brilliant. Together, these two men are more than brilliant. Ravenous' soundtrack is exactly the sound you'd like to have running whilst merrily hunting down your human prey, preferrably in the mountainous and wood-covered ranges of something with only thin air left. Tenderness******* and all that.

Pacing: Comes with the soundtrack - or rather, the existence of this brilliant musical accompaniment to the narrative told here proves that the pacing is here - and it is indeed. It runs. It floats. It's natural. Sometimes, it speeds up a bit to let us cherish the rest of the story as well instead of dwelling too long on one point (as I would be wont to do, just so that you unnecessarily are aware of that); it generally can be said that the movement is fluid and follows from what has already happened how (and how fast). Natural pacing. It's rare to see that in a movie - especially in a movie about cannibalism!

By the way: Why is it that when a woman produces and directs a movie that is witty, gory, entertaining and full of suspense throughout gets called weird, but when guys do the same thing, no one says that? Oh, wait. 21st century, I nearly forgot.


Anyways! I am not writing as much and as lengthily as I would actually want to (...there's A LOT of stuff about this movie in my brain that wants to jump out at unsuspecting strangers, trust me...); this is due to me sitting here in front of the craptop, trying to go through my list of movie-reviews I have jotted down under the heading of 'to write' in order to do at least a bit of stuff that is actually really important to the world at large******** instead of just sitting around and worrying about stuff bothering me. So I ask you to forgive me this insanely short review of a movie that would deserve 30+ screens of analysis and love and hugs and kisses and kinky sex.


Hence: This movie is going to be one of the best you've ever watched, unless you seriously dislike character development, in-period-garb for actors, great and difficile acting, wonderful stereotypes used as they should be used, cognizant pacing, a beautiful soundtrack that makes you want to hunt people********* and twists and turns most people cannot foresee. I enjoy this movie immensely, whenever I have the chance to watch it. Some day, I shall make this review longer and more tedious and awesome to read...

11 / 10 holes in the ground. Like... holes. In the ground.

* Read: mad and obsessive.

** CSICON: Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal: 'Finnegan's paper began with the electrifying sentence, "The average Canadian has one testicle, just like Adolph Hitler -- or, more precisely, the average Canadian has 0.96 testicles, an even sadder plight than Hitler's, if the average Anything actually existed." He then went on to demonstrate that the normal or average human lives in substandard housing in Asia, has 1.04 vaginas, cannot read or write, suffers from malnutrition and never heard of Silken Thomas Fitzgerald or Brian Boru. "The normal," he concluded "consists of a null set which nobody and nothing really fits."' 

*** Destrøyer øv t3k-N0-10gY

**** I officially and psychologically hate yellow. Hence the colour. Now delve into your Schadenfreude! 

***** Eh? Eh? EH?

****** Yes. I listen to Ö1 and love horror movies, nothing wrong with those two usually mutually exclusive things being combined into one happy package in me. :D

******* Possibly not the tenderness most people are thinking of when hearing or reading that word. Just to make this clear: There is no cuddling involved. 

******** The snark comes from realising that nothing I do is actually really important to the world at large. 

********* I don't know about you guys, but I feel like doing a Ravenous impromptu-show whenever I hear the soundtrack... *grins*

The Hamiltons (2006)

What does it mean to be happy? To be content in the world around you?

*...I don't know why I continue to see the Butcher Brothers' feature The Hamiltons as a short - I have watched it often enough to be familiar with and aware of the 86:35 playing length, so it can't be that. I am not usually stoned and/or drunk when watching it, and have not experienced intoxicant-induced blackouts recently, so it can't be that either. I know the story, the structure, the characters. But it still remains a short in my mind - short movie as well as short story.

It is a good story, though - perfect material for a short story. A novella if you really want to dig into the material, but being one of the creatures with a penchant for stringing words together so that they may look pretty, shiny and appetising, I'd spontaneously go with the short story-format.

Take care: A teenager is rebelling against his family whilst slipping into puberty. Twist: He's from a family of (...) monsters (?).

Essentially, this is the plot. And I can see how you can work a solid story around this, how to use the particularities of a teenager trying to figure out where he fits into the world in the case of a family without parents trying to figure out their place in the world. The isolation, the problems. Seriously - I would like to write something like this if I would be more inclined to A) take up the pen again, B) had any sort of connection to that concept - besides for having been a teenager once myself, as I suppose most of us have. But the thing I would not be able to do is wring more than is in the story out of it. And I think that this is what The Hamiltons is attempting. It does not fail - it works commendably considering what it has to work with. However: Do not make full-length movies (or stories!) out of short-story-material.

That said:

I have a soft spot in my heart for anthropomorphic non-traditional monster portrayals in which the monsters can also be, you know, 'normal' and stuff like that. Considering that, I really should appreciate the new millennium, as the fad of using outsiders and monster-like creatures as protagonists doesn't seem to stop anytime soon, but I am admittedly not the biggest fan of those ...thing-ies. Do remember, however, that Cannibal Flesh Riot! is the best movie in the whole world evar.

So... monstrous humanoid family. I guess it's not a big secret that the actual kind of monstrous humanoid being under consideration here are vampires (and yes, I dread vampire flicks these days...).

I imagine that people who perceive human blood on a superficial level (smell through skin, aroma on sweat, see the subcutan veins and capillaries, are aware of the pulse and/or heartbeat, can see the minute movements of skin spread out over the pathways of blood...) all.the.effing.time appear to be spaced out a bit when they are caught up in someone's blood's perception. An I imagine near-perfect portrayal by young actor Cory Knauf - so yeah, in order to check the acting we'd need to observe a starved blood-drinker in its natural surroundings, and I somehow doubt that this will happen anytime soon. As long as monsters are not being revealed to mankind as real, we have to take this performance as the best we can get at the moment (not counting TV-appearances by self-proclaimed 'real vampires' - more power to those of my awesome readers who happen to be of that persuasion, but: srsly?).

Staying with that topic for a moment, I shall rant: Amazingly, this movie is not on the hot-list of real vampires all over the world, or at least so I gather from the occasional mention of 'real vampires' disapproving of this movie on the various online media which cater to movie-lovers and other creatures of the horror movie world, under which I freely subsume those who need to proclaim that they are licking other irresponsible people's blood off the tiny wounds they inflicted with diabetics' tools. *shakes head* Srsly. People who want to be taken seriously should attempt to stay away from clichés like having a fake European accent, being all pale and clad in black, wallowing in self-pity - in general: Try not to be V:tM. Even if it goes against even your most uninhibited animalistic instincts to throw yourself at the mercy of the media and rational people waiting to point their fingers at you mockingly.

So.

Enough of subtly insulting minorities, on with the review in question.

How would you feel if you knew you were suffering from a rare disease of unknown origin - one that made you need human blood, one that made you need to drink it (-- fresh --) regularly? In large doses? A disease for which there was no cure, which wasn't even acknowledged by the medical sciences or even within the emerging fields of new medical research? Something apparently genetic, which has already changed you, made you different from other people - and you know that you'll need to drink at some point, else your health and sanity fail.

What would you do?

The Hamiltons tries to tell this story from the POV of a teenager (Francis, played by aforementioned Cory Knauf) born into a family of blood-drinkers. 'real vampires', if you will. They're apparently not immortal, nor immune to diseases, aging, wounds etc. - or the effects from lack of food. They love, hate; they feel passion (mostly for one another, but who would blame then - if you'd be part of a family of monsters that eats humans, you wouldn't exactly want to be with a human being unless you truly enjoy making yourself suffer mental and psychological agonies like straight from the abyss, or at least that's my guess). They try to live a normal life in a world that doesn't really offer up a place for them, stuck in a society in which they're not really able to 'be normal' at all; and the need to take in human blood as per survival makes normalcy within a human society very, very complicated... especially for teenagers of a rebellious age. And a family this volatile.

So... the family:

- David (odd but good performance by Samuel Child), the oldest of the siblings: Working as a butcher, he remains the one attempting to make their lives as normal as possible. Under 'normal', David understands 'banal', 'trifling' and 'American', judging from the things he enacts in order to introduce normalcy to their lives. He is also a quiet homosexual and raging with suppressed anger, which comes out pretty clearly in how Child chooses to depict the 'nice elder brother[-thing-from-the-beyond]'. 

- The twins, Wendell and Darlene (Joseph McKelheer and Mackenzie Firgens respectively). They are the ones who don't care for normalcy or 'fitting in' with the crowd - after all, the crowd consists of food. Point. The incestuous couple seems to follow a hedonistic life principle, where enjoying yourself and feeding, using, abusing and playing with people is one of the more fun things to do. Add sex and slight bi-polar tendencies in both, and you got yourself an explosive mix.

- Francis - teenager. 'nuff said.

Teenager Francis' plight is actually understandable in hindsight: Watching the movie for the first time, statements like "But I really don't fit in there!" in regards to school, just to state one example, just seemed eternally, abysmally bad. After the ending, re-watching the flick to see how I responded to the movie after knowing the story, I found the stereotyped scenes to be amusing and a kind of an inside nod to the viewers in the know rather than a mistake of the script / movie's conceptualisation. It's things like this that make up for the lack of the story's potential outside a short. It would be my guess that the Butcher Brothers are quite intentionally portraying ironically heightened stereotypes of certain rôles within society these days - a pointed and realistic portrayal of people in need of portraying people due to not-really-being-people. Gods, this is complicated at times like this...!

Talking to an acquaintance about this movie, I realised that the plot's elements actually correspond quite perfectly to van Gennep's theory of rites de passage - in this particular case, the class of initiation rites. What Francis is going through symbolises the classical transition from child to adult, the coming-of-age as it is more commonly known - within the universe and mythology the Butcher Brothers established in this movie. The focus of the movie on transitions is palpable throughout, as well as a focus on boundaries and the transgression of them. I don't want to accuse the movie of having been structured after ritual theory and/or other anthropological/sociological/psychological etc. concepts, but if you're taking those into consideration, it helps to enrich an otherwise pretty (low-)standard flick. And make me wax philosophically about fucking ritual theory... I really should get a grip on myself.

Speaking of people not-really-being-people: Why, do these vampiric types always decide to dutifully eat food that they know they cannot stomach properly, leading to the inevitable throwing up after eating? Why? I mean... WHY?! What could it possibly be that makes people eat things that make them throw up violently? A kind of weird, pseudo-humanistic insistence on being like everybody else, only not in the sense that solid food makes you vomit (...then again, I am the last person that should talk when it comes to throwing up 'normal food' and living with an unusual diet...)? What kind of twisted world view is this?
...I am baffled. Simply baffled.

Besides for this complex topic: David actually is merely keeping up a rational and sane persona all the time - which breaks at around the hour mark, when he starts exsanguinating a blonde twat and rants to her about random things - I would be more specific here, but alas, I don't want to watch the movie again for merely this quote. 

Admittedly, this is exactly the point where I would suspect someone who has kept a mask of sanity all the time around others and who gets triggered by the scent and/or sight of blood to break out of the persona and fall right into the pit of self.

As for being a stickler for details:
During the exsanguination, David uses some sort of... I don't know, a mix between a dialysis-machine, those things used for washing plasma and simple bags and tubes.
I cannot see the pumping equipment; also, as far as I am aware of, you need thicker plastic tubes to transfer blood effectively from the human body to some receptable (like a blood bag, as used in this movie). However, I shall believe the pwetty pictures, so I'll let these things slide. For nao.



6.2 / 10 memories slipping away in blood. And family.

 

"We live with a disease.
[...]
And everything you thought you knew about us is wrong.
We live in the houses next to you; we work in the stores you shop at; our kids play with your kids. We're just trying to be an ordinary family trying to figure out where we fit in in the world.
But we do need blood. And we need a lot of it.
Preferrably fresh, and not frozen."

* No screenshots for the time being; the laptop I am using is not able to handle that much stress.