Brotherhood of Blood

I tend to be attracted to any movie featuring Sid Haig (The Devil's Rejects, House of 1000 Corpses). Add vampire to the theme and you have me hooked.

This isn't a traditional vampire tale, but more a film noir thriller where a group of vampire hunters is seeking the brother of a rich CEO (William Snow). The brother was bitten in Romania. Meanwhile, the vampires themselves are hunting the same brother to prevent the resurrection of "Vlad Bossei" a super-vampire who lived in the 12th century.

There film is definitely nonlinear as we jump from today, where Carrie (Pratt) is a captive of Pashek (Haig) and Fork (Wes Ramsey); to yesterday, where they are trying to get information out of Stanis (Ken Foree - Rob Zombie's Halloween, The Devil's Rejects); to last week to get the full story.

Victoria Pratt ("Mutant X", Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep) is the leader of the vampire hunters, and does a very good job in this film. I also enjoyed Wes Ramsey's performance.

The twist at the end screams sequel.

You ever watch a movie and you keep waiting for something to happen that made sense? You ever watch a movie with horrible dialogue and horrible acting, hoping at some point it would get better?

This is one of those movies and, it never gets better. Not all acting is going to be great and not all dialogue is perfect, however in this film, it never got even close to mediocre.

I'm guessing this movie rose out of the vampire genre that was so popular.....Maybe it still is.....and thus, was made, without much thought.

This movie reminded me of "It's ALive" from the 70s. The acting and dialogue were that bad......The only difference was the fake baby in "It's Alive" added campy humor.

The one plus.....The lead actress was pleasant to look at.

Subtlety is a very important thing in any good horror movie. Not only does subtlety reduce the ridiculous amount of "in-your-face-quality" that today's horror movies seem to love, which effectively makes then just plain old action movies, subtlety shows that a film has respect for its audience. It doesn't feel like it has to explain everything at every step of the way since it knows that an interested audience will be on the lookout for hints as to what is going on. That's what makes films like this enjoyable. In fact, that what makes any film enjoyable. It isn't just a barrage of images, but rather an engaging sequence of them. This sequence can be unchronologically organized or in any number of ways obscured to create suspense, but as long as it is engaging, the audience will be happy. There are numerous hints as to what is really going on and the final climatic twist is really a good one.

I was able to attend the advanced screening here in New York and must say I enjoyed myself. First of all the movie is cool. It has a great story line plus it is simple. There are no huge dramatical special effects because the dialog and the story line, in itself, hold there own. You are just thrown into the plot head-on and then given little chance to breathe as the movie takes you deep into a story so rich with characters. The cinematography was really nothing to write home about, pretty standard stuff for the most part. The score was unobtrusive. The story is what drives this film and makes it special. And the actors were well chosen to run with the story. This movie gets two thumbs up from me.

The acting is very good. The primary and secondary actors performed their roles really good. Everybody is believable - not usual for a vampire movie. The editing and sets were not great, but the story is what draws you in. The plot is fascinating, a multi-layered story. The film alternates between scenes from the present and about one week prior. Some may find that unnerving, but it is very well written.

I recommend this film for anyone who likes mysteries or intelligent horror stories. I give it 7 stars and not 8 or 9 cause you see that it is very low budget and the first 10 minutes or so is slow and you really don't know what is happening. But when it picks up - it pulls you through with a big bang!