Cryptz

Cryptz (2002) is a movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows some aspiring rappers who have a curse put on them by a stripper. They follow the stripper to the strip club to be released of the curse and discover the strip club is full of vampires. The rappers will need to hack their way out if they hope to survive.

This movie is directed by Danny Draven (Patient Seven) and stars Choice Skinner (Black Lightening), Rick Irvin (Heavenly Deposit), Lunden De'Leon (We're the Millers) and Olimpia Fernandez (Killjoy 2).

The acting, dialogue and storyline in this are all as awful as it sounds. There was a Chris Tucker wannabe that was a bit corny. The girls in this are even inconsistent, which is sad based on the setting. There should have been more nudity based on the storyline. The kills are uneven with a couple good ones with solid gore and blood splatter.

Overall this movie is a disaster that I'd recommend skipping. I'd score this a 1/10.

I've seen a lot of bad vampire movies and a lot of Full Moon movies and I have to say that this is one of the worst in either category. I can't believe there are people defending this movie. It has absolutely no redeeming qualities. Even using the lower standards one applies to low budget horror this is a substandard movie. The acting is horrible. The script is almost non-existent. Even the cheap thrills of gore and nudity are badly done.

Skip this movie.

Tymez lives with his mother and hopes to perhaps become a rapper with his buddies. His mother wants him to get a job, but when he goes out he gets together with his friends and they spot a busty woman and flirt with her. They then try to find the club she works at, "Cryptz," by calling a spooky friend of theirs named Truck who they think know all about underground clubs and things like that. He's a meditating muscleman.

Truck warns them against trying to find the woman or the club, and when he learns Tymez was touched by her, he instructs them to duct tape him to his bed. Instead, they fall asleep in front of a TV, and Tymez wakes up with his face burning and he runs to the club with his friends in tow. At the club, they're pretty happy watching women dancing, but when the call Truck again they're warned again, and indeed most of the people at the club are vampires!

This was a fairly silly low-budget horror movie, so it's hard to be too harsh on it. However, some of the scenes really drag. The scene where the three guys are trying to decide how to find the woman goes on for a long time, for example, with little camera movement. I guess they felt obligated to shoot all the dialog that was scripted, and then were happy with it, but it could have been cut down.

The ending is fairly lame. The day ends, but there are some loose ends almost like a set-up for a sequel, and weirdest of all is something involving Tymez' tattoo.

Not recommended, but as I said, it's not terrible.

I appreciate what is being done here. We are at a point where Black cinema is trying to diversify genuinely, and this movie is a fine example of what we've always been trying to do. It would have been great if they could have had a larger budget, but they did spectacularly with what they had. I saw the genius, a true rose growing from the concrete. I see the mountaintop. Too much? Hey man! After Blade's success, someone should have said, "We'll give you a little more money to try to be more like Blade." Instead, Hollywood still did not think that the numbers were good enough. We're close, and I want to thank those who brought us one step further to the top of the mountain.

Kind of a black version of From Dusk Till Dawn only without all the excess of the latter. Anyway, this is a direct to video film from Full Moon. It is better then a lot of the films they have been putting out lately (much, much better then Dead and Rotting), but because these films budgets have been so extremely limited right now, there really isn't anything the makers of this film could really do. I will give them credit, they certainly tried. Budget limits pretty much kill an interesting idea.