Perhaps it's an unconscious symbolic reaction to the blood suckers who've bled our economy dry of recent, but people can't seem to get enough of vampire tales of recent. From HBO's "True Blood" to the recent first big screen adaptation entry of the "Twilight" novel series, the hemoglobin thirsty characters are certainly in vogue nowadays and don't seem ready to go away anytime soon.
There's the upcoming "Twilight" sequel, "New Moon" that has a new director, Chris Weitz, whose brother Paul, coincidentally or not, is tackling another vampire literary series, albeit a less popular one and sans the swooning tween girls. And that would be "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant," a messy amalgamation of the first trilogy of four from "The Saga of Darren Shan" (a.k.a. "Cirque du Freak: The Saga of Darren Shan" here in the U.S.), written by none other than Darren Shan (in reality Darren O'Shaughnessy).
To be completely honest, I had never heard of the 12 book series before this film, but then again I'm not in the target demographic of boys looking for a mixture of horror, comedy and teen issues (as compared to the "Twilight" stories and their combo of horror, romance and teen issues that are squarely aimed at girls).
Granted, this isn't the first and probably won't be the last time filmmakers have attempted to mix comedy and horror in a vampire flick as it's been done before in pics ranging from "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" (where Bela Lugosi reprised his Dracula role) to "The Lost Boys." Yet, it's a hard cross-genre to pull off, and this film is a prime example of that.
Of course, some of that could also stem from Weitz and screenwriter Brian Helgeland (who once penned the likes of "L.A. Confidential" and "Mystic River" before slumming with this) trying to cram far too many characters and related plotlines from the first three novels into one film.
Then there's the fact that editor Leslie Jones either was in over her head or some studio executive got their hands into the mix and ordered changes to the scene and sequence arrangement. Whatever the case, the result is a sloppy mess of storytelling that might still manage to get from point A to, well point M or so (I'll get to that in a second), but does so in an unnecessarily convoluted and less than involving fashion, while many of the special effects aren't exactly that special, let alone state of the art.
The biggest problem, however, is that the movie is mostly a prelude to what's supposedly going to follow, meaning there's no truly defined conclusion to the flick. Sure, there's the big mano a mano battle (actually two, occurring as they like to do in these sorts of films, simultaneously) near the end, but the conclusion just leaves us hanging for what's presumably the bulk of the main story. Unless one's a diehard fan of the literary series, however, I doubt there will be many viewers waiting with bated breath to see how things play out in the next film installment.
What might be most disappointing -- and in which most of the potential presumably was lying in wait -- is the filmmakers (and/or the studio hack) deciding to focus more on the vampires than the "freaks" of the title. While there are plenty of them to go around, they're only briefly seen doing their thing near the beginning when the two central boys (a bland Chris Massoglia as the good kid and a mediocre Josh Hutcherson as the pending bad seed) take in the Cirque show. Those mutants are then mainly relegated to background status in a tent-based camp out in the woods as the vampire part of the tale is introduced and then plodded through without much of anything interesting coming out of that.
The "big" twist here is that some vampires (such as the ones played by John C. Reilly and Willem Dafoe seemingly trying to channel Vincent Price) only feed on humans, while their rivals, the "vampanese" (near solely embodied by Ray Stevenson) are cold-blooded killers.
There's supposedly a long-standing truce that's about to be broken (thanks to a nebulous Daddy Warbucks looking figure who wants all hell to break loose), something foreseen by Salma Hayek's character who can sometimes channel visions of the future when not growing a beard nearly down to her ample and out-there-for-everyone-to-see cleavage). Blah-blah-blah and yada-yada-yada, as does anyone really care? The filmmakers certainly don't give us any reason to.
I'll admit there are some funny individual moments and lines, and I realize the true scares can't really be there due to the target audience. But the mix of the two genre elements doesn't really gel that well, and the messily edited story and substandard effects don't help matters.
All of which is ever the more discouraging since Weitz proved he can do a good mentor/student sort of story with "About a Boy" back in 2002. The same sort of potential -- albeit in a completely different sort of tale -- was available here (as Reilly's character introduces Massoglia's to all things vampire, and does so somewhat reluctantly as occurred in that previous adaptation of Nick Hornby's work). Alas, the character depth, exploration and growth that was so fully present there is nowhere to be found in this offering.
The result is a film that comes off as just an introduction of more that's to come, but after sitting through this misfire, I certainly won't be waiting to sink my fangs into the next installment, and I imagine I won't be alone in that sentiment. It's time to drive a stake through this and the overall uptick in vampire films and let those blood suckers sleep it off for a while before they're resurrected again. If you have a thirst for a horror comedy mix featuring them, I'd suggest going back to the far better "The Lost Boys" before purchasing a ticket to "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant," a disappointment that rates as just a 3 out of 10.
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