Movie: Against The Dark (2009)
I'm watching a cheesy vampire movie out of the corner of my eye as I do some other important work (from which I'm taking a small break to write this). It was a fairly random pick from Crackle that was something I hadn't seen that didn't look totally dumb. Well, it looked a little dumb, but I canĀ handle that.
Spoilers follow after the break.
The description warns that it's campy, and that it has Steven Seagal as a vampire hunter. He leads a small group of civilian vigilante vampire hunters, supported in part by the military, though the military has no direct involvement with vampire hunting throughout the film.
The story starts with a narrative about how a virus wiped out people, and turned them into cannibalistic monsters, who would infect other people (if they weren't consumed), so it became a pretty big deal pretty fast. Your typical zombie premise, but these monsters tended more vampire with avoidance of light, hunting by night and so on.
Seagal and his band of marauders are seen in quick cut scenes swinging swords and large knifes, killing the monster people with slashes, stabs, shotguns, and other moves generally ineffective against movie monsters.
A parallel story follows a couple familes who have encountered each other in a hospital, looking for supplies and safe shelter during the night. They wander from room to room, even after finding what seem to be safe places to hide out. At times they get split-up, and then will be rejoined. They encounter the monsters, and often escape by shutting doors behind as they run through, jamming the doors with chairs or tables. The monsters, as in many movies, have lost some sense of reasoning.
A side story is of the dispatched military, who are planning an attack on the area. From this story we learn that the Seagal group is trying to find any last survivors before the area is obliterated in an attempt to remove the monsters. Seagal's group splits up to find the spread-out members of the other group, and as the groups are gathered, make their way back to safety. Well, not everyone makes it to safety, but that would be too Hollywood if they did; this isn't Shaun of the Dead, afterall (yeah, not everyone made it out of that one, either, come to think of it...).
In an overdramatically delivered line, the underlying theme of all of these movies, first shared in Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is that we're the monsters. The bulk of civilization has turned into these virus-ridden vampire creatures, and the small number of "survivors" who hunt them are actually the monsters.
Before the group is cleared from the area, the military makes the call and sends their planes to bomb the zone, and complete their mission. Out of communication, the group doesn't know this is happening, but know that time is short. They make haste to safety, while continuing to hunt along the way,
Kudos to the movie makers for some of the imaginitive ways they monsters are dispatched. A small boo for the inconsistent treatment of zombie and vampire tendencies. As typical, the survivors all seem to swing from really savvy to lazy and stupid as the situation seems to call for, or as the movie drags and needs a fresh scare or kill.
For those that wonder, Seagal is, well, Seagal; all dark and brooding, delivering his lines in whispery reverence. Whether that's good or bad I leave to the reader.