The Thompsons

Francis (Cory Knauf), the central character in The Butcher Brothers' The Thompsons (the sequel to their 2006 movie The Hamiltons), is something of a tortured soul, a vampire troubled by his bloody lifestyle, searching for a meaning to his existence. Having fled the US with his bloodsucking family, he now wanders the UK looking for others like him so that he can learn about his heritage and perhaps even find love among his own kind.

The photogenic cast; the oh-so-serious emo sensibilities; the romance between vampire clans; the film-makers desperately striving for a sense of cool: The Thompsons might easily be confused for an installment of the Twilight series if it wasn't for all the graphic sex and violence on display. I doubt very much that Bella Swan would ever get it on with an absinthe addled Parisian whore, or whether Edward would savagely tear the throat out of his victims, drenching himself in blood in the process, but the vampires in this film have no such qualms, narrowly preventing it from being another worthless piece of PG-13 horror-lite and just about earning it a recommendation from yours truly.

This is not a real review, it should be taken more as a collection of impressions on the film.

Considering first of all that there are enough vampire films now and this is just the umpteenth but at least do it well, the film is very very mediocre and doesn't seem to commit, it seems like they simply wanted to make a vampire film because vampires usually sell but without adding anything else. The plot is very banal even if the plot twist isn't that bad and really surprised me, I dare say that this is the only positive thing about the film. However, we must also talk about the ending which is very far-fetched because it seems they wanted to hurry up and close the film and therefore made an ending that was a little too incongruent with the story just to give a happy ending to the events.

I'm reviewing this strictly as the sequel to The Hamiltons, which I did see first.

Ok, my hopes were dashed pretty quickly after witnessing 8 minutes of digital effects, digital blood, and digital fangs. Then the title card came up.

The story of The Thompsons revolves around the same character as in the first movie, and that would be Francis. Only now, he is this assertive, brooding, badass? Talk about a 180. I was assuming this movie would pick up where the last one left off, as the ending to The Hamiltons screamed "there's more coming!" Nope, this one starts off in England, and primarily takes place there, but the family has splintered (er, just hiding out) to different regions of the world.

What follows is a whole bunch of timeline shifting. 2012. How popular was Quentin Tarantino in 2012? I would say he's the master of interweaving timelines. Here, in The Thompsons, it comes off as really unnecessary.

The crux of this movie is intriguing. Francis is sent to England only with a name and a town, to try and track down an ancient vampire clan, and maybe find some place that they can call home. Oh, they're real hospitable. And this is where it gets predictable. Wait, Francis was in a box... Damn you timeline! What is interesting, is that these particular, more powerful, vampires descended directly from the Thompson/Hamilton bloodline. Now, why it was crucial to breed with the Thompson's (weaker) daughter, did not make any sense to me (well, she is real foxy...). There is a good twist at the end, when David shows up in England with their dying youngest.

Do you need to see The Hamiltons first to enjoy this movie? Besides the fact that The Hamiltons is a superior movie, especially with character depth, the answer is absolutely not. Their entire story is rehashed, through a series of flashbacks and voiceovers in The Thompsons. One thing I really enjoy in sequels, are all the "references" that you can only pick up on only by seeing the original. No such luck here.

First of all I must say that it is nice to have a vampire movie that is not tailor-made for a teenage girl audience with sparkly vampires and big hair. However, that being said, then I will flip the sword around and say that this vampire movie is far from being amongst the more interesting or appealing of vampire movies that I have seen.

The story is about a family of vampires who flee from USA after having made it to the news with a video of them killing humans. The vampires find themselves in England where they seek the help of another vampire family, but is blood thicker than water?

Having sat through "The Thompsons" now, I must say that I am filled with an overwhelming sensation of that this storyline was utterly and completely unnecessary. The story left no lasting impression on me, nor did it manage to rise above mediocrity in its concept and execution.

It should be said that the people in the movie were actually doing a great enough job with their given roles, though it is not award-worthy material here, far from it.

For a vampire movie, then there were surprisingly few effects in the movie. One good thing, and an interesting thing, about the movie, was that the vampires here were not immortal nor undead. So that was an interesting approach to the mythical vampire creature.

"The Thompsons" is the type of movie that you watch once, then shrug your shoulders and forget about the movie. It failed to make a lasting mark, despite having enough fangs to bite deeply with.

If a sequel tries to tell you a new story instead of rehashing/repeating what part 1 did, that is a good thing. Unfortunately this sequel is not only predictable (almost from start to finish), but also just above mediocre in general. That means it's not really bad, but it won't get your blood pumping either (no pun intended).

Since the main characters are established in the quirkier and better Thompsons, you'd expect this to go different places. And in a way it does, but that only is true in geographic terms. There's not a real story behind it all, it's a simple "match", that you will either like or you might find it too simple. Whatever the case, if you can bare with the characters (because you saw the previous film or just simply because you like the actors), than this is indeed watchable. Otherwise ... don't bother.