Smart | Vast | Too Slow
It’s that time of year. The best of the best come out at night. The terrors that haunted us when we were younger start tickling the back of our necks again. New fears rise out of the horrors of everyday life and plague our dreams in highly exaggerated and metaphorical ways. It’s October everyone. While this is my first horror review for the Halloween infested month, I have been paying my dues and watching all of my favorites throughout the month so far. Since I don’t like reviewing movies I’ve already seen, I got all of those out of the way before I experienced new adventures, characters, and scares. I searched and journeyed through the categories of Netflix to find the first horror film I’d review, and I came across a highly rated vampire, post-apocalyptic film entitled Stake Land.
The title itself makes the film seem like a C-Grade horror film that riddles art houses for about five days, but the film’s excellent opening and introductions of the characters Mister and Martin widened my eyes and opened my heart with hopefulness. The first act of the film is great. You’ve got two likable characters: Mister, the veteran vampire hunter, and his extremely green sidekick/trainee, Martin, who lost his mother, father, and baby brother in vicious style. Immediately, the excitement of a buddy, road-trip style vampire film licked my movie-going chops and everything was set up for a violent, emotional, and heart-wrenching experience.
But, something happened. In the first act, there are some wonderful glimpses into each character’s psyche and inner depth that were just waiting to be released, giving hope for a more character-driven vampire film than a deus-ex-machina/monster attack driven film. Sadly, this is exactly what it becomes after the break into Act Two. The film is just attack, attack, sit around, survive, and then another attack. We never get to know the characters we’re spending so much time with. There’s an excellent scene in Act One where Mister kills two 16-year-old boys who just finished raping a nun. The scene is similar to Mel Gibson’s bloody rampage in The Patriot. The only difference is we actually learn about the event(s) that planted that rage inside of Mel Gibson’s character. In Stake Land, Mister’s dark background remains in a corner that no one ever gets to stand in. It’s extremely disappointing, especially since he is the ONLY memorable character in the film. Everyone else is either a generic cliché in the post-apocalyptic genre or not alive long enough to care about. I really would’ve liked to see this turn into a dramatic experience. The chemistry Mister and Martin had was nothing short of perfect, and it’s a shame that the non-existent character development, additional characters, and lack of plot kept me from falling in love with them.
When I say there is lack of a plot, I mean it. Sure, in the beginning they establish a “safe zone” called New Eden, which is always north of the characters’ current position. Since they are always heading north, you’d think the audience would be able to put the two together and come up with a goal. Wrong. It took me until Plot Point #3, which in itself wasn’t that great of a halfway marker, to realize, “Oh, they are trying to get to New Eden. I thought that was just a place, and the characters were just surviving.” The reason I say this is because shortly after the break into Act Two and the two heroes find the pregnant girl, who I perceived to be Martin’s love interest at first, everything turns into “Survival” mode. Now, you might think, “Well, it is a post-apocalyptic film, so Survival is key.” I do oh so agree, sir/ma’am, but survival mode gets boring. The film turned into a bunch of montages and traveling sequences that show the characters living in the world, setting up traps, and sleeping under the stars. Barely any character interaction, development, or arc plot points. It gets slow and boring with only spurts of vampire action. If the film took this direction but we discovered who these characters are and fell in love with them, then this style of storytelling wouldn’t be so bad. But, it’s literally watching four actors acting on screen instead of characters trying to survive in a vampire-ridden world. Add this to an ill-defined goal, and you lose interest real fast.
The vampires themselves are fun. There are different types like in the recent video game from Naughty Dog, The Last of Us. Some need to be stabbed in the head because their chest plate, covering their heart, is as strong as steel. Others actually use their brains and set up traps that capture survivors. It was one of the only bright lights lit along this dark and mysterious tunnel of a film. There were one or two moments where I actually felt sympathy for the vampires, which I thought was interesting and could’ve been developed further. The vampires weren’t in the style of Bela Lugosi or Gary Oldman, but they were similar to Underworld and the infected zombies that have plagued the film world recently. But, normal vampire rules do still apply. Sunlight kills them and the best way to kill them is with a stake to the heart. Towards the end of the film, the vampires lose their diversity and become more like the aggressive, violent, mindless infected zombies we’ve grown accustomed to. In all honesty, I prefer the infected zombies because they can attack during daytime and nighttime. Daytime in Stake Land was where most of the montages and traveling sequences occurred. Very boring.
I do love the now cliché saying, “A picture is worth 1000 words.” There are a few moments like that in this film. The main one I will talk about is when Martin first encounters Belle, the pregnant girl that eventually joins the group. There’s a great moment where Martin is sitting in a bar watching Mister have a lovely slow dance with a woman. During this dance, Belle and Martin lock eyes. This moment screams “AH HA! Love Story has BEGUN!” Then, in the next scene, we see Belle hitchhiking and guess who picks her up? Mister and Martin. “AH HA! Love Story is off to the RACES!” Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. The scene in the bar is literally the only time Belle and Martin have any kind of “romantic” encounter. For the rest of the movie they interact in fighting off vampires, survival/trap building/fire making montages, and traveling sequences. When I say interacting I mean they help each other survive and build traps. No B-story development or character development. And this brings me back to what I said before. There are some promising characters here, but we never get to know them. The only thing we have to dive into Martin’s character is his consistent voiceover for the entire film, which is great in the beginning but loses its cool as the film progress, like all voiceovers these days. I thought Martin and Belle’s love story was going to be the B-story, but instead there really is no B-Story. The only “B-story” I could come up with is Martin’s relationship with the nun they saved, but that whole bit is sub-par in my mind.
If Martin and Belle’s relationship were the B-story, it would’ve had the PERFECT ending. The main antagonist, who has become an extremely clever vampire, captures Belle, bites her, kills her unborn child, and leaves her hanging on the wall… alive. Her screams draw Martin and Mister to an abandoned farm silo, and that’s where the heroes defeat the villain. In what could’ve been an extremely emotional moment, Martin has to kill Belle because she’ll turn into a vampire if he doesn’t. Now, with the shallow characters and their relationships, this moment has SOME emotional impact. SOME… some. Now, imagine if up to this point we’ve seen Martin grow from a boy to a man who is in LOVE with Belle and seen Belle grow from a scared, talented, beautiful pregnant girl to a strong woman who is ready to be a mother and is in LOVE with Martin. Imagine if we experienced how their adolescent relationship strengthened and became serious in order for them to survive in this barren wasteland of a world. Imagine if Martin would’ve started treating that unborn child as his own, and that made Belle fall in love with him even more. Regardless of how it was done, just imagine the relationship you had with your first love, or the best relationship you’ve had. Now, inject yourself into this film and… you have to kill your love by stabbing her through the heart…
Your stomach just sank didn’t it? That’s the potential this moment had in the film had, but sadly it falls way short.
The film is okay, though. I didn’t particularly like it, but there are some pretty exciting moments that peeked my interest. Like the scene where the Brotherhood, the main antagonistic force, drops vampires from a helicopter into a designated safe zone, creating a chaotic event that ends in bloodshed. The way Mister and Martin survived, even though it was boring to constantly watch, was very, very smart. The contraptions they came up with for traps and how they protected themselves as they slept in a car was really fun to see developed. The locations are vast and truly make you believe you’re watching something taking place after the apocalypse. The music was one of the best parts, but that’s because I’m a sucker for a solo somber piano with a nice violin quartet accent. All good points, but they aren’t enough.
The film had promise, a lot of promise, but it failed to deliver on the level of humanity. The only character I cared about was Mister, but even his mysterious nature made me yawn. I do suggest seeing this film, but if you’re like me, then you won’t be watching it a second time. There’s some fun and interesting methods of survival, but I can’t give this film anything above an average 6/10 rating.
Thank you,
-Matt Brunhofer
