A vampiric outbreak has ravaged the world, leaving humanity on its last legs and struggling to survive. After his own family is horrifically slaughtered, a boy known simply as "Martin" is saved by an experienced hunter simply named "Mister," who takes him under his wing and begins to train him. Driving him across the lands of this broken down and depleted America, the two set out in hopes of reaching the idyllic New Eden, where purportedly they can begin a new life.
If you've ever imagined what would happen if Cormac McCarthy's The Road would have been like had it been littered and mixed with the best atmospheric parts from Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead and a dash of John Carpenter's Vampires, perhaps I've found the next film you should be watching on your Netflix queue. And most surprisingly, for the most frugal of fans, which makes up a large portion of my own personal friends list, it isn't a foreign production either.
For a film about vampires, we come to find out that there may exist far worse things in this collapsed and mysterious world than the beings that suck your blood and turn you into a monster, as evidenced by the fanatical Jebedia Loven, leader of a group of religious devotees known as the Brotherhood, played here excellently by Broadway actor Michael Cerveris. But don't even think twice about it: the vampires in Stake Land are still absolute monsters, and this is how they should be portrayed. While I don't mind the old "romantic" take on vampires seen in the old days and multiple tales, I've been more partial to their depiction as mean, insane, and bloodthirsty creations who will feast on even infants in order to survive (as seen here on more than one occasion). I'll also have to make it a habit to incorporate the term "Scamp," a term for a younger person turned into such a creature, into my horror vocabulary. Perhaps my only complaint about any of the villainy seen throughout lies in the sound department, which sadly recycles sound effects from pig squeals and generic monster growls for the vampires, but that could be the only legitimate problem I had other than minor squabbles, and perhaps that was due to time restrictions and budget limitations.
Casting-wise, as I hinted at above, everybody nailed their parts, and the characters actually aren't as cliched as you may think they could be in a field or genre that's been admittedly played out. Nick Damici's "Mister" might remind you of Tallahassee from Zombieland, except he's played with a much more serious manner and with a more fatherly figure tone. Damici also happened to co-write the film, and it seems that he knew he had to make viewers want to root for this character while not making him an alienating dickhead either. I'd also like to see more from Connor Paolo, whose "Martin" was great to see grow over the course of the film, and provided an unexpected narration that was very uncommon for a film such as this. True, the reliance upon this borders on turning into an overdose of exposition, but it knows when to stop at just the right times. This isn't just a boys club, however, as along the way, they run into some other faces like modern-day "Scream Queen" Danielle Harris (Halloween 4 & 5, The Wild Thornberrys, Hatchet II) and Kelly McGillis (Top Gun), in which the latter even came out of retirement in order to play her role! Pretty darn cool if you ask me.
It's an incredible shame that Stake Land hasn't gained a more massive following, or wasn't released to a wider audience, thus rendering it into the realm of the mostly unknown. As it stands right now, the film cost around four million dollars to make, but hasn't even grossed forty thousand, even based on a limited run in theaters back in 2010 and good word of mouth from critics like Roger Ebert (R.I.P.). It has the makings of an independent or midnight movie classic, and is arguably one of the best American-made vampire films in years, and my personal favorite film involving the bloodsuckers since Let the Right One In. I don't usually rank the films that I view from Unseen Terror, but if such a thing was done, this one will have to make a theoretical top five or top ten based on uniqueness alone. I'd be happy to purchase a copy on home video, solely to give director Jim Mickle and writer/star Nick Damici a few extra dollars towards any future projects they may want to do.
Tomorrow, we're back into the realm of anthologies with THE ABCs OF DEATH!
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