Monday, August 12, 2013

Vampire Boys 2: The New Brood – review

Director: Steven Vasquez

Release date: 2013

Contains Spoilers

When I wrote my review for Vampire Boys I suggested that one element that was missing from a lot of gay orientated horror films was the actual horror.

I am pleased to say that despite this sequel to that film getting much wrong – continuity, dialogue and acting are high up on the list – it does make more of an effort to include a horror element than the previous film. It might not entirely succeed in this goal but it certainly tried.

Jon Euler as Jasin
To recap, in respect of the first film, it followed the fortunes of Caleb (Will Branske), a student moved to LA who is seduced by Jasin (Jon Euler). Jasin is the master of a coven of vampires and because he has been a vampire for 100 years has to find his “chosen one” or he and his coven will die (remember that). By the end of the film Jasin and Caleb are together in a coven consisting of Dane (Brett R. Miller), Adam (Chase Klein) and Tara (Zasu, Vampire Boys). Tara was to have been his chosen one but Jasin passed her over for Caleb. Note that only Zasu is an original actor from the first film. This film is one year on.

Demetrius and Judah
This film begins with some voice overs from Jasin and Demetrius (Rob Hoflund), Demetrius being another vampire who we’ll get to in a second. We are at a boxing sparing session where Judah (Ronnie Kerr) is sparring with Kevin (Quinn Jaxon), whose father is paying Judah to train him. After the sparring there is blood on Judah’s glove. He reveals fangs (we discover later he has never drunk human blood). In comes Demetrius, who is Judah’s cousin. He is looking for revenge because of abandonment.

Rivals at war
Long story short. Demetrius was turned by a vampire (who had been preying on his mother apparently) and led to believe he was the vampire master’s chosen one (the same vampire later turned Judah, after preying on his mother also). The vampire master later abandoned him for another – Jasin (and abandoned Jasin for another also). Demetrius is consumed with jealousy and wishes to destroy Jasin and his coven. He also needs to find a chosen one himself. Here we have continuity error number 1, the big fail as it were. In the last film we discovered that Jasin, as a master vampire in his own right, had to find a chosen one or he and his coven would die. Jasin is obviously a younger vampire than Demetrius and thus Demetrius and his coven should all be dead, by the lore logic of these films, as Demetrius must be over 100 and has no chosen one.

sloppy eater
So Demetrius’ master plan is to create a large coven by getting humans to fight each other to the death and picking the strongest. The first attempt at this (a guy and girl getting it on) doesn’t go so well as they are not prepared to fight each other and so he has vampire and psychic Tyler (Sebastian Liczner) kill them. Another (less drastic) continuity error here as he chows down on one and proves himself to be a sloppy eater getting blood smeared over mouth and chin. He gets up to get the second and his face is miraculously clean again until he feeds off number two.

Zasu as Tara
The second part of the master plan is to convert Tara to a member of his own coven – this is done by Tyler mojoing her somehow. He also has her feed (neither Tara nor Caleb have fed from humans making them fledglings, still part human). The final part is to make Jasin watch Tara kill Caleb, taking away his chosen one and breaking him. Then he aims to take a chosen one himself. As diabolical plans go it isn’t the most despicable in filmic history but it was a better stab at thriller/horror then the original film.

self impaled
So I have mentioned continuity errors. The dialogue was as risible as the first film, they didn’t have a prime central actor as they had in the first film and the whole thing looked cheap. However, this was more enjoyable than the first film, a step along the path to guilty pleasure – even if it hasn’t actually got there yet. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

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