This feature film is rather short, about 71 minutes in length, but I found it engaging. I feel it could have benefitted from extra time for character development, but considering the budget, it did quite well.
The film starts with a cityscape, then cuts to a parking lot where a car is alone in the middle of the lot. A woman in scrubs, who goes by the name of Vanessa, approaches the car. Two guys start harassing her, but they’ve picked the wrong woman. She fights back, spitting and showing her teeth. She feeds on one of his limbs, breaks the neck of another, and calmly proceeds to grab trash bags from the trunk of her car. She then drives off, flinging the trash bags off a bridge. After that, she heads over to a garage to wash the blood off her car. While driving home, she starts licking blood off her hand. That was a detail I did not appreciate. She had just washed the car with a high-power water hose, so even if that blood hadn’t washed off, it would have dried. It feels like a short hand moment, but one we didn’t need.
The film goes back to the year 1968 where a car is driving and picks up a hitchhiker which is apparently Vanessa. Now, the driver is none other than Layla (Dorothy Hadley Joly) who attempts to strike a conversation with the young woman and then proceeds to offer her an apple. Subsequently, we see Vanessa in the car asleep while Layla starts attacking her and feeding her. I liked the fact that Layla is drawn as a stereotypical 1960s housewife and not as a more genre clichéd housewife in terms of costume design. I also liked the fact that her style was consistent even when we see her in the primary timeline. The scene shifts to the present and we see another character, Bento (Sky Crystal) throwing trash bags in the same location Vanessa did. The moment Vanessa arrives home, her neighbor Walker (Tim Michael Schmidt) spots her and observes the blood on her scrubs. He is a cop and looks out of shape, but he gets a call and seems to be in a hurry.
Now we jump back to 1969 where Vanessa and Layla are witnessing some rather strange activity, such as feeding on a hitchhiker or a person sitting in the driver’s seat with their hand out. Circling back to Layla, she seems really pleased with the Vanessas decision and even states that the next time. But again, I’m left wondering what happened in between the time of 1968 and 1969. It seems that there won’t be a next time as Vanessa calls both the Vanpires “cursed” and begins to abandon ”ungrateful” Layla. Fast forward to the current day, Bento is chiseling on a dental cast alongside some people screaming within the surrounding area. The cops have our resident body disposal expert at the fly tipping site as they begin to assume that there are at least three bodies that have been dismembered. Walker shows up on the scene, and he, along with his colleague, notice Bento leaving in the vehicle he was parked in. Walker had been looking for him since Benfica put him down as a lookeew too.
Vanessa works at a blood bank so she is able to get blood for herself when she needs it. Walker goes to her because he saw her wearing blood on her scrubs and she tells him it is from a bag that burst. Later, she brings him wine. Bento works in a comic book store, and quite opportunistically takes victims, and while claiming to suffer from anemia, he does confess he enjoys drinking blood. Coincidence makes him step after Vanessa and gets him interested when she tries to frighten him off with her fangs. They meet in the middle, as it were.
My challenge was primarily from the scripting. There were periods that were a bit loose with their chronology (for example, Bento is seen at home, and then, a minute later, is at the crime scene. While this time sequence is possible, it does require some strengthening of the relay of time that has passed). For me, there was also a need to spending more time with the characters and I feel the film was too short for sufficient character study. A moment when Vanessa’s first victim appears back as a memory or ghost wasn’t as well balanced as it could have been. On the other hand, I was interested in the film, and I thought Lindsey Mitchell gave a good performance, rather convincing. It was the concern that I had. It was the mannerisms with the moustache or simply the look, but I could quite easily see Bento being played by Elijah Wood. Sky Crystal did get on with what was there, but more needed to be done on the character and he needed to do more with the character and the dialogue. It didn’t help when he was referred to as a ‘big one’ when he looked slight in stature.
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