ARROW FRIGHTFEST (digital): There's No Such Thing As Vampires
fantasia
Logan Thomas' There’s No Such Thing as Vampires is a vampire story with very little to say beyond what has already been explored within the genre. When Joshua (Josh Plasse) and Ariel (Emma Holzer) crash into each other in the dead of night, they find themselves pursued across the desert, the target of a stalking vampire with a mysterious presence. While beginning as this quasi-interesting, Duel-like road movie, There’s No Such Thing as Vampires quickly unravels itself as an un-ornamented vampire film, with a Dracula-figure that won’t even scare the trick-or-treaters.
In many ways, There’s No Such Thing as Vampires operates more closely to Twilight than it does traditional horror; a descriptor that will become more obvious upon the twist of the film. Fright Fest being as horror-literate a festival as they come, to have a character that shows the film ‘understands horror’, only for them to spout that “Jason isn’t even in the first Friday the 13th film.'' It is a statement not dissimilar to expressing that Zelda is actually the name of the Princess in The Legend of Zelda to a horde of Nintendo fans. Uhhh, duh? It is as embarrassing of an experience as there is, and a total misunderstanding of what fans want from a ‘smart horror’.
What is most unfortunate is the wealth of talented cast members here. The chemistry between the two leads, as explained by Logan Thomas, was one of the most worked for achievements within the film. The casting process was long and it paid off, despite most other components of the film. Emma Holzer is the most known of the leads (Spring Breakers, The Blackcoat’s Daughter), but there’s a couple other cameos from Meg Foster of They Live fame and Raphael Sbarge of Independence Day. It seems to want to channel that nostalgic aura of a Terminator-esque hunted by a malevolent force concept. While the ‘aura’ is certainly there, the filmmaking talents do nothing but provide a foul stench of the aesthetic they wanted to recreate and champion.
There’s No Such Thing as Vampires is fundamentally a nothing movie. It offers nothing to the vampire mythology beyond teenage sentiment, and the horror itself is essentially non-existent. The vampire is cartoonish, there’s barely any kills and the plot itself will leave you forgetting that interesting films touching on similar themes can even exist.