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I came across this at the 2009 Bram Stoker Film Festival. There were many other vampire movies during the festival and this was actually the only movie from Britain. Unfortunately, Orlock the Vampire at 3D was the weakest vampire film at the festival. And Orlock was what can be defined as a 3D cinematic atrocity. And this…
It is safe to say, rather ungraciously, that it was shallow but served the purpose of looking good. The acting on the other hand was frustratingly disappointing, like impossibly disappointing. The big problem with the movie was its story which was average. Everything else, from acting to writing to even directing was mediocre at best.
It starts with Issy (Caroline Haines) standing upon a bridge over the Thames, attempting to gather the strength to take her own life. Her internal dialogue is narrated in voice over. It must be this way, everyone has passed. Else, expiry would be painful. The problem… I didn’t believe that. The contemplation of a woman at the cusp of her sanity wasn’t depicted enough for me to be persuaded to think otherwise. So, maybe it was just over the top melodrama. Even worse, it could be at a Demons level. The credits roll, and the time shifts into reverse.
Before an evening out, Issy unfortunately has a fight with Simon (Alexander D’Andrea) and after a few drinks at the pub with friends, she finds herself in an illegal mini cab. Suffice to say, things take a turn for the worse when the driver (Jim Ford) becomes aggressive and she realizes there is no getting away. In a desperate attempt to escape, she manages to get out of the cab; however, he catches up to her. Luckily, Aurelie (Rachel Waters) comes to his rescue. Although Issy is confused about what exactly is happening to her, Aurelie cleans her wounds and bites Issy sorta. She is then told she is Margot, making this whole situation and how Aurelie helps her even more of a mystery. This after all, is a tale of the “vampire’s lover returned through reincarnation” story.
As Issy transforms into Margot, she has dreams of Aurelie helping her. With blood smeared all across the walls, she fights for freedom. This drastic change leaves her sister Kylie (Laura Evans) concerned because she finds Issy alone in the bathroom. After telling Kyllie that she thinks she suffers from amnesia, she breaks down telling everyone she was raped. After lying still for a few seconds, she wipes away her tears and desperately attempts to refuse the aid of the police or even her mother (Faith Hanstaner).
Kylie is in the bottom floor of the house with her mother when her boyfriend, Jason (Sammy Dodds), comes over. Then, Issy comes from the upstairs and is immediately greeted with some nasty remarks from her mother with regards to the dangers posed by alcohol. Then, she attempts to consume something, but ends up vomiting instead. Afterwards, she attempts to leave for work, but is unable to do so as the sun is too bright for her to handle and it hurts her. Then, she locks herself in her room and after a brief disagreement with her mom, falls asleep. While she is unconscious, she is able to self-repair herself.
By evening, she is rested and starts getting ready to go out, and that is when they all prepare to go out. Kylie is amused by the fact that Issy is not burned even though her blouse from last night is soaked in blood. I was shocked too, as it was way too bright outside and the sun had not set yet which made evening seem strange, but Issy was taking her train. Her eyes were glowing red as she was experiencing some kind of psychic flashes. So, she decided to buy some wine, but it made her so nauseous that she ended up smashing the bottle in anger.
Aurelie, along with her clan of female vampires, set out for a more intriguing approach to Temptation, a burlesque/strip club. Until recently it had been regarded as your run-of-the-mill strip club, albeit, the substantial amount of actual stripping did not take place. burlesque-style penned reviews put it best “There isn’t much focus on glamour.” There is considerable chaos since one of the girls in the group had murdered a man and carelessly left his corpse behind. The authorities get to it before anyone can get rid of the sordid surprise.
Law enforcement attends to the case
Anyhow, one quick short (for the sake of brevity) to the story goes. Upon noticing Issy outside of the Temptation club, Simon desperately tried to justify himself by saying there are no women, other than his wife, which he kisses. Now, coming back to his wife, due to some unforeseen circumstance, Simon the delusional obsessive, paranoid follower of her convinced that her wife is indeed pregnant and is in a covert relation. The police safeguarded her mobile device, which they found lost in the taxi. They get to discover the dead body of the minicab driver, so to establish a chronology followed with miracles that gets them DNA tests in a day. That’s rather than in the four typical months. Aurelie does not know how unserious Issy’s family brings her. Meanwhile, to Issy it is all somewhat bewildering.
At that point, she has not been killed, so she’s a half-vampire. A demon has possessed her, but she possesses a soul as well. To kill a vampire in this, one would need to stab through the heart, burn, and expose to sunlight. It’s quite graphic too, we see a staking of a human who’s perhaps an exaggerated version of a vampire – so perhaps it’s a reverse of whatever lore is out there. What’s fascinating is that Aurelie has kept alive the person who killed Margot, and she has turned him into a half-vampire and then imprisoned him somewhere between the land of the living and the dead. But I feel it would have been a nice tale to follow, however it is just a side story.
Aurelie can move so fast that her shadow remains behind, this appeared like a reference to Nosferatu and thankfully in one of the set designs, where a painting was on a fractured wall of a factory, a clawed hand was painted and it also looked like a nod to Nosferatu.
Even though the plot was dull and not very engaging, there were moments in the movie that I enjoyed. However, the movie could have received a higher score if not for a couple of reasons. My greatest issue came from the acting, which I found to be unreasonable. I do not wish to be too critical, but some of the accents were too soap operas. On the other hand, the absence of atmosphere was a letdown. While watching the movie, I recall a sequence in which notions of temptation and vampire games were combined. It seemed like a more gigantic version of the Marilyn Manson video. In my opinion, the issues that Issy goes through are very real. For example, once she was attacked, I pictured her with surrealistic vampire graphics, which is indeed much worse than simply odd.
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