Crimson Winter

The last vampire film I actually enjoyed was Interview with the Vampire (1994). The locations, story, and sheer scope of the film was impressive. Since then, I have seen a lot of bloated, high budget, and disappointing attempts at a vampire story.

Enter Interwoven Film's "Crimson Winter", an impressive effort that brings back the days when story was king. Truth be told, the only reason I decided to watch this film is because it was shot in my home state of Montana. But once I heard the brooding narration of the main character lamenting his many experiences over the course of many lifetimes contrasted by beautiful shots of the mountains of Montana, I was hooked.

"Crimson" tells a familiar story in an unfamiliar way. This is a story that requires your attention and rewards it. The story weaves in tales of family betrayal, forbidden love, revenge, survival, compromise, and ideals.

This is a gritty, well shot, well acted, independent film that challenges audiences to think about choices, and in this case, what they may mean for centuries to come. It is about belief, and holding on to that belief for so long it could be forgotten. At the end of the day, it is about that wretched, rewarding, painful, and amazing thing called love.

This movie is the epitome of telling rather than showing. Nearly every scene is a practice in exposition while remarkably telling us nothing about the characters.

Speaking of the characters there is no personality with any characters beyond brooding (lookin' at you Gerard Way lookin' lead).

The story (if there even is one beneath veritable tsunami of word vomit that is the exposition) is at best lackluster and at worst contrived and nonsensical.

The score is distracting and often mismatched to what's happening on screen. I hope you're fond of a single slow pace string music song because you're in for almost two hours of it.

I'd comment on the actors performances but hardly anyone had a line to deliver that wasn't a monologue of exposition (can you sense my salt with this films exposition delivery yet?)

The camera work was constantly tight on the characters faces and somehow managed to look tight even with (what was supposed to be) wide shots.

It's obvious that this film was stretched too far for the means of production, the technical aspect where moderately respectable but it's overshadowed by the horrific amount of cheesy exposition.

In conclusion this was a dull movie with human shaped scripts telling you the story rather than showing anything, that takes itself far to seriously and confused brooding looks for personality.

I'm sorty, but I stumbled across this by accident and - knowing nothing sbout it at all - thought I'd give it a shot. About 15 minutes in I must have nodded off out of boredom during a droning monologue, then woke up to more droning monologue (or perhaps the same one, it was hard to know) at the 36 minute mark. So maybe I missed the best bits, but judging from the rest of this movie... I seriously doubt it.

It wasn't until I checked here on imdb that I realised what the actual story was supposed to be and that it involved vampires. Oookaaay. Then I checked the run time and thought "1 hr 46 mins? If I'm this bored now, how much worse will it be by then?"

Honestly, it's meant to be a movie not an audio book so there should be more show than tell. Well placed dialogue does serve to advance the story (and even the occasional monologue has it's place) but this was just drowning in depressingly toned droning. Think Louis' monologues from Interview with the Vampire, but less interesting and much much longer.

God, even the accompanying musical score is depressing!

Ultimately it's a very slow-paced, down-beat audio book on screen with some probably reasonable actors (hard to know with this material); so if this is your cup of tea, enjoy. If you want something more than nearly two hours of what sounds like depressingly bad news because of the voice tones and music, maybe move on to something else.

For me: This movie was a beautiful Vampire film. I never expected it to be this good. It is real Gothic. If you want a film full of CGI effects then this movie is not for you - this movie has more realism than most high dollar Hollywood films because it is not filled out with CGI effects. This movie did not need a bunch of fight scenes with effects to make it good - because the story was good.

Also, the scenery and costuming is to die for as well as nice casting/acting and a good story. I loved the ending - the falcon (that is all I will say with out giving the story away).

On the subject of language: Yes the movie is in English. Very very little of the movie is in French and Latin. A copy I watched of this film online had no subtitles for the foreign languages BUT I now own a copy of the film and the DVD does in-fact have the subtitles.

And would LOVE to see a sequel! (They could leave what happens next to our imagination or create a part two.) I give this one a 10/10. Truly Gothic (realism) without Hollywood glitz and glamour.

thank you crimson winter for bringing art back into myth of vampires. there have been so many cheesy and horrible vampire films and TV series lately that i gave up on watching vampire films, until now. the folktales of vampires have been around for almost 300 years or more and crimson winter returns an aesthetic honor back to this historic tale. if you have a love for vampires (one of my favorite horror "monsters"), then you will really appreciate the character development, acting, script, plot, and direction. i really can't say enough about how well crimson winter was developed; it makes you realize the vast difference between a Hollywood-thoughtless-horror-flick and true art. i'm not going to ruin the movie for you with details, just watch it.