Honourable Mention: Folklore

Folklore is a 2012 film written and directed by Justin Calen Chenn and had a simple, yet effective premise. The Quartz Agency is a multi-national Government Agency that tracks and monitors the creatures of folklore (be they supernatural, extra-terrestrial or science adapted) that live on earth.

The primary purpose of the Agency is to ensure that they are assimilating into human culture and to offer help as necessary. The creatures must submit to interview every two years and the film follows the relatively new Agent, Collins Jahn (Brad Roller), as he interviews a series of folklore creatures ‘ably’ assisted by co-worker Merle Eppis (Laura Waddell).

Subjects for the day include alien twins Risa Elizabeth Ipsitt (Sherill Turner) and Collees Genoviva Ipsitt (Rachel Rath), who used to be part of one creature and are now trying individuality, Yofino Gunlauggson (Garrett Liggett) an Icelandic troll and Eatha Haemm (Maria Olsen) a unicorn. That’s right… a unicorn and this shows the strength of the film. Clearly filmed on a budget the folklore creatures all look like you or I (to an extent at least) with minimal makeup effects on some to give us an impression of their otherness. However the film concentrated on script and characterisation in order that it might work and work it does.

Classification: vampire

Our interest, however, is round MaryLane Heth (Ruth Connell) the vampire he sees that day. She is a Scottish vampire who left her farm having been given the sucker (never say vampire) curse by a midget sucker and has come to New York as there is rumour of a cure in Brooklyn. She is a dominatrix, in return for blood, and a self-defence instructor – using the art of the Slap.

fangs on show

Lore we pick up on include the facts that she can retract her fangs, her eyes are light sensitive and she is telepathic. She dislikes the interviewers calling Merle ugly and addressing Collins as wiener-boy. She also introduces him to the Slap. At the coda of the film we discover that she eventually did discover a herbal cure.

Folklore was one of those surprising films that was genuinely funny due to its weird and wonderful characterisations and is worth catching. The vampiric involvement is a fleeting visitation only, however. The imdb page is here and the film’s homepage is here.