by Karl Madsen, Media Editor, Horror
Every once in a while you get a movie where the main antagonist isn’t the most dangerous. That’s the case with Stake Land, a vampire movie where the bloodsuckers are the obvious bad guys, but are by no means the most dangerous.
In Stake Land there has been an outbreak of vampirism, and humanity has been splintered into lone travelers and small communities. The communities operate on a barter system and rely on the travelers to bring in food, medicines, tools, and luxury items. And everyone waits for confirmation of the safe zone in the north, New Eden.
Mister (Nick Damici – Mulberry Street) is a loner who saves Martin (Connor Paolo – Gossip Girl) from the vampire attack that killed his parents. Instead of dropping Martin at one of the communities, Mister is training him to become a vampire hunter, one of the most respected and needed commodities on this frontier. Along the way they team up with pregnant waitress, Belle (Danielle Harris – Hatchet 2), war veteran Willie (Sean Nelson – The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3) and with a woman of the cloth, Sister (Kelly McGillis – Top Gun), who they have also saved from a couple of rapists from the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood is an organization that uses radio broadcasts offering salvation and safety, then keeps women for recreation, as long as they are usable, robs travelers, recruits the willing and the unwilling become bait. One of their favorite ways to take over an enclave is by dropping captured vampires into community, waiting for the carnage to conclude, and enter the camp to loot and take prisoners. This pleasant group is led by Jebedia Loven (Michael Cerveris – Fringe), and he has taken a personal interest in the demise of Mister, for the killing of his son, one of the rapists. He continues to broadcast his propaganda, but has added a description and reward for Mister and Martin. If you didn’t see that coming the next couple run-ins with each other will surprise you.
Stake Land is your classic good versus evil, with a refreshingly simple character development. The good guys are good, and the bad guys are bad. When Mister takes Martin under his wing, there is no doubt it’s so Martin will be able to learn to take care of himself, and know that there are people that care about you. The same goes for Jebedia and his merry band. He has no compassion for others and will take care of himself at the expense of anyone who has what he wants. Another aspect of this movie that sets this apart from other post apocalypse is the authenticity of the settings. The abandoned buildings and stark landscape paints an odd picture of desperation and hope, hope that the buildings will someday be inhabited.
I’m not a Special Features sort of person, beyond deleted scenes, blooper reels, and the occasional commentary, but this movie has a feature I hadn’t seen done with the finesse of this one. Stake Land has seven character prequels, though one is an origin short, which gives some sort of an insight to the main characters. Some of the prequels show events that lead up to the characters introduction in the movie, and some are an event that develops the character into what they became.
Special Features:
2 Feature Length Cast and Crew Commentaries
Going for the Throat: The Making of Stake Land
Character Prequels: 7 Short Films
Video Diaries: Pre-production – Storyboards – Visual FX – Post-Production
Toronto International Film Festival Premier and Q&A
Karl’s Scores:
Acting – A+
Setting – A+
Special Effects – A+
Creep Factor – A+
Tension – A
What the Heck Moments – Too many to count
Overall – A+
Stake Land is one of those movies that you could pick to pieces, but you just don’t want to. If you kibitz the movie in any way, you would ruin the relationship you develop with the characters, so you accept what they do, in the places they do it. And you hope there really is a New Eden.
ComicsOnline gives Stake Land 5 berserker vampires out of 5 Brotherhood lackeys.
Get your copy of Stake Landon Blu-ray at Amazon.com.
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