Southern Gothic

Being a massive vampire, horror, and all round b movie lover the first 5 minutes of this movie had lots of promise, and I was really rooting for this to be a cracking undiscovered dark little tale of southern Gothic mayhem. However, 20 mins in it soon became apparrant that the film lacked anything more than the flimsiest of plots, little or nothing in the way of meaningful character development, and some serious challenges on the sound and lighting front.

However, the film is not without it's charms - William Forsythe does a pretty sinister preacher man in the first third (although is wasted after that), the moody lead guy has some presence (although poorly directed and with a rubbish script), and there are some of great uses of imagery and visual flair that do actually work, as well as some not bad fx in a few places.

Mark Young seemed to have the makings of a dark little tale of vampirism, religious zealousness, and redemptin here, but either ran out of money, ideas and focus by the end, which is rushed and contrived to say the least and generally de-railed by poor execution all round.

Someone give this man a good script, a decent budget, and a sound engineer. A missed opportunity. Revisit Katheryn Bigelow's Near Dark instead for the real deal.

A disgraced nightclub bouncer faces off against a psychotic zealot vampire preacher. Quite a crazed concept ripe for hyperactive exploitation thrills, and yet Southern Gothic plays it pretty low key and laconic, for the most part anyway. Moody where other films would have been brash, it's a nice atmosphere piece with gore galore and a gonzo central performance from William Forsythe as Enoch Pitt, a man of the lord who has strayed from the path. Bitten by a vampire, the already sleazy Pitt turns into a full on monster, tearing up the small Deep South town of Redemption and building an army of the undead. Hazel Fortune (Yul Vasquez) is traumatized and broken by the death of his young daughter, until he meets young Hope (Emily Catherine Young), who crosses Pitt's vision and finds herself in mortal danger. This puts the two men on a vengeful collision course of blood, retribution and carnage. Ok, so I've made it sound a little more epic than it actually is, but that's more or less how it goes down. Energetic it ain't, more of a slow burn than anything else. Firmly rooted in B-movie territory in terms of both budget and script, but entertaining and distinctly flavoured nonetheless. Vasquez is moody and four, but dangerous when he needs to be. Forsythe, as usual, is the acting equivalent to a junkyard bulldog let off the chain, chewing scenery faster than he can munch carotid arteries, and loving every campy, frightening minute of it. Not the cream of the horror crop per sé, but reasonable enough Saturday night horror background noise fodder.

I'm the first one to root for a B-movie, a movie that has been done with a small budget. But there is only so much I can accept and this movie definitely crosses that line. Having said that, there might be quite a few people out there (despite the low rating here), that don't mind the lighting, the sound inconsistencies and other "technical" flaws. They might not even mind, that the characters are bland at best. But for those who do mind: Avoid.

Of course we can assume, that no director/filmmaker sets out to do a bad movie. And you have to admit that they try hard here. But I can't give them extra points for trying, because imho I think the movie deserves that. Again if you want to take the risk, you might feel different. You should be able to tell, how you feel about the movie, 15 to 20 minutes into it. If you don't like it by then, you won't like it until the end!

Trying to get his life back in order, a suicidal bouncer tries to protect the stripper at his club that has become the target of a religious zealot who has become a vampire threatening to unleash Armageddon on mankind through his newfound condition.

This could've been a potentially enjoyable and rousing vampire effort is instead a classic wasted opportunity. The main thing on display here is the fact that the religious zealot of a main character is one of the weakest main villains here who is thoroughly unconvincing in the role. Among the bigger issues with that is how he seems intent to mope about the shadows and yammer on in a series of clichéd Biblical quotations and verses concerning the downfall of man or being with his congregation than actually doing anything, and overall there's little here beyond being a vampire to really get anything out of him as a villain. Likewise, his status as a back-woods preacher that barely holds fifty- people in his congregation makes his posturing and world-domination plans way too comical, aided in no small part by his ineffectual human help and lack of vampiric back-up. That also brings up another big issue here in the disjointed plot which is rather chaotic throughout here with the real lack of vampiric activities overall, since there's very few scenes of confrontations between the hunter and his query as the film substitutes this lack of hunting them down for endless scenes of him trying to cope with his life or integrating himself into their family, which are nicely handled for once but lack any action. These scenes hold off the vampire activity so much that there's only a few fleeting moments of action in the whole second half which really slows it down considerably after the great opening right before the finale. These are compounded by the film's good points which signal this could've been something enjoyable, as there's an endless series of great action scenes from the rather intriguing plot that sets itself up quite nicely with the hotel ambush and his initial transformation sequence, the action in the bar and bringing along the quick attacks on the patrons which are rather enjoyable. The finale as well comes off even better with the abduction, a series of fine brawls and the shootouts along the big church confrontation all coming along with having enough vampire violence and great gore to go along with those potentially enjoyable elements. There's enough to see where this could've been great, but instead is a giant wasted opportunity.

Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and children-in- jeopardy.

I've been searching all over the internet looking for the song that plays while starla is talking to the preacher and dancing for him. If anyone know that name of the song and that band I would really like to know.