Dampyr

This movie is yet another tedious cover of all the vpure movies of the past, the most obvious being John Csrpenter's Vampires. This movie follows that plot almost scene for scene.

That would be fine if there was some meat to chew on, so to speak, but this movie is all bare bones. The acting is - as do many of these entries into the vampire world - dead. The action is just plain dumb. For example, the protagonist charges towards the villain (a vampire) 3 or 4 times, only to be hurled back 50 feet. And what does he do when he gets on his feet again? Yup. He charges at the vampire AGAIN. No matter it didn't work the previous 4 times. And you have the usual humans-encountering-vampires fight. Humans fire their machine guns, the vampires laugh. Well, you can figure out what happens next.

And one can easily predict the dialogue, or the following scene. It drones on and on. The trajectory resembles the recently launched rocket that flew 500 feet towards space - and promptly exploded. If it was an ekg, it would be a flatline. My husband watched, while I just listened. I asked four times how it was, and his response was "bad." There is no genuine tension or climax in the movie. How anyone could get this at 10 is beyond me. I can understand being entertained (and even that is questionable), but objectively? A poorly done film with little plot, bad acting, endlessly derivative. This is a 5 at best. A 3 is a fair rating. Keep in mind, I'm not the demographic for this, whom I would imagine to be 18 year olds who like to watch things explode, or guns firing endlessly. For the rest, this will not cut the mustard.

For fans of the genre, it's pretty much a mishmash of other stories. Hints of Blade, Vampire Hunter D, so on with maybe a touch of Constantine. Definitely scripted to be the start of a series, but would be surprised if someone sprung for the desired sequels. Does meet Netflix criteria, however - Cheap to make. Production quality is fine for the Eastern European origins (on par with Blade 1). Worth the watch if nothing else catches your eye, but don't expect an Oscar quality script or performance. I'm sure any plot holes (big enough to drive a truck through) will be filled in its intended sequels or possibly filled in by its comic book origins.

It's the 21th century and you want to make a high concept, low budget movie. In other words, you aim to play in the same league of Spider-Man and Jurassic World, but spending one tenth of the money. It may look like a mission impossible - yeah, pun intended - but you still can do it, if you balance your lack of means with fine writing and a cascade of explosive ideas.

Dampyr, well, doesn't.

I'm not a SFX fanatic and I don't care about the visual effects looking cheap, as long as the script is surprising and the characters are well crafted and the dialogues are brilliant. Unfortunately, in Dampyr there's none of this. In fact there's nothing at all: think of one of those action-horror flicks which were a trend a couple of decades ago - Blade, Hellboy, Underworld - then strip it of anything that makes it interesting and you'll have Dampyr.

Dishonorable mention for the villain: we end up knowing nothing about his plans or his background or his personality, he's a funhouse prop which pops up now and then just to show how much he's scary.

I'm giving two stars instead of one just for the Balkanic setup, which at least is quite unusual for this kind of film.

Dampyr is a B-movie that wears its B-movieness with pride. It is solidly in the category of "so bad it's good", with every possible cliche and Godzilla-sized plot holes.

At first, I had high hopes for the 1990s Yugoslavia war setting hoping to see a blend of history and fantasy, but 10 minutes later, it became clear that whoever wrote the script, had a very vague idea about history, Slavic names, how human beings talk, or how to write a script. Were the soldiers Serbs? Croats? Who knows, and none of them wore uniforms, nor indicated who they were fighting for nor the actual country they were in. The war is a vague event with a bunch of plainclothes fashion models drive around in Al Qaeda-style pickup trucks with big guns and kewl 1970s music, occasionally shooting a surviving civilian. What, you didn't know? War is hell.

But once you stop expecting any semblance of logic and assume it's a parody, it turns out to be a tolerable experience. Commander Dolce & Gabbana (background: requisite dead family) and a vampire slayer (background: Jesus with a drinking problem; never asked himself why he's been alive for hundreds of years without aging) are joined by a hot blonde vampire (background: hot; blonde; vampire) to take on a bad vampire. That's it. The rest is what you'd expect it to be, plus plot holes. Turn off your brain, watch, and enjoy, with an optional drinking game for cliches and plot holes.

When i saw the trailer for this movie it got me intrigued. Its the kind of movies i enjoy in general. Vampire theme, fight scenes and such. But when these movies are made outside of the United States and release VOD, usually they are kinda cheap and it show.

But this one actually came out pretty decent. Yes the sets are mostly old eastern europe rural areas so nothing too fancy and the costumes, guns etc ain't exactly the best looking i ever saw, but the action is well filmed and the CGI effects are not overused. The french dub version gave some decent acting in general and the characters altough not particulary complex were fine.

The movie does not take too much time establishing itself and altough its set in some war set-up, i have no idea what actual war it is and even the movie use more as a pretext to have characters there rather than be important to the plot.

Overall for a saturday night movie with a few beers during Halloween season, it does the job pretty fine.