I was flipping through the channels last night and found a vampire movie on Syfy. My eyes were all set to roll painfully into the back of my head as my finger lay poised on the channel button. Then I thought, well I'll give it a moment to see how horrible this film is. That moment turned into the rest of the movie. I was shocked. This was a good film!
I checked Stake Land out on Rotten Tomatoes and it got a surprising 4 out of 5 stars. One critic echoed my own thoughts: "[the director's] observation of a devastated working-class America is so sharp that the horror elements, though effectively handled, come to feel like an afterthought".
The monsters and the 'horror' is secondary to the characters and their motivations. You could easily substitute these zombie-like vamps for terrorists or roving gangs or those pushy old people who power walk in packs at the mall and will mow you down if you don't get out of the way. But I digress...
Is this a film you've seen yourself? What were your thoughts?
1 comment:
I watched it, and I thought it was a great film! It had a really unique point-of-view and told a story well that was genuinely spooky in parts. I think if it was done properly, it would make a fantastic television series in the same vein as "The Walking Dead". If nothing else, the setting would make it fun -- you can probably come up with a dozen plot lines based on setting alone. You called it correctly, in my opinion; it's a unique, stand-on-its-own-merit movie that holds your attention because of story and characters, not CGI and gore.
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