Don't get me wrong, I love all things Vampire. So much so that I've seen the Twilight movies (not read the books though, I have better things to do with my time, like sleep) and mildly enjoy them, I watch True Blood religiously, and even show a passing interest in The Vampire Diaries. But that doesn't mean that these things aren't an affront to everything that Vamp iconography has established over the years (because they are), it just means I'm a whore and should be punished for my sins.
Vampires do not belong in love stories or soap operas, they don't belong on the walls of adolescent girls or skyscraper sized promo posters, they belong in our deepest darkest nightmares.
30 Days Of Night went some way towards restoring the humble Vampire to it's terrifying roots, but that film was just a blip, fighting against the rising tide of Twilight clones.
Stakeland, an independent picture from little known talents Jim Mickle and Nick Damici (who plays Vamp hunter 'Mister' in the film), feels like it should start a revolution. From the shocking opening moments to the mildly hopeful conclusion, Stakeland reminds us why Vampires used to be such frightening boogymen in the first place.
Vampires are the antithesis of everything good, their condition is a metaphor for AIDS, cancer, basically everything that eats away at a humans existence, they are the end of life. The film takes place after the world has succumbed to the plague and, as the remnants of humanity attempt to survive, they only bring themselves closer to destruction.
It doesn't seem like coincidence that the young boy at the films centre is named Martin, after all, the last film to genuinely attempt a re visioning of the Vampire movie myth was George Romero's Martin, a film that also juxtaposes the monstrous Vampire nature and the equally monstrous human condition. The Zombie maestro's work informs the film's overall tone as well, Mickle and Damici's bleak, bitter depiction of a ruined America recalls Romero's Dead Saga, minus the dark streak of comedy, there is nothing funny about Stakeland.
But what of the Vamps themselves? Feral beasts halfway between rotting cadavers and rabid psychos, Stakeland's antagonist's are a far cry from the chiseled good looks and sparkly skin of Edward Cullen. Scott Charles Stewart recently attempted portray the Vampire as a feral abominations, but his tool was shonky CGI, here the the Vamps are real and therefore the threat to our disparate group of heroes is real.
This film should be a revolution, with the Twilight saga coming to an end the Vampire genre needs to be the stuff of nightmare again. Stakeland proves that it can, but more importantly, it proves that it should.
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