“The Breed”
Movie #26: 31- Days of Horror Challenge 2018
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In a rather dreary steampunk future where vampires have begun to openly and peacefully exist with humanity, a human cop and a vampire cop team up to catch what appears to be a serial killer attempting to destroy that fragile peace.
On the plus side of this slow burn vampire/buddy cop movie, the vampires have fangs at all times and don’t change physical form when feeding. The soundtrack is mournful, helping to set the oppressive tone. The heavy overtones of the parallels between racism throughout history was bash you in the face obvious. Lots of grey and blue color through the movie to keep the visual reminder of oppression, too.
On the more flamboyant side, Bai Ling is gorgeous as always. Adrian Paul is … Andrian Paul… as a vampire. Bokeem Woodbine as the hero of the piece is an interesting choice. He works, though I didn’t care for the character, I mean Woodbine has unquestionable talent, and he played Detective Grant as an angry, somewhat prejudiced cop who grew through the story. Maybe I just didn’t like that the character was reactionary and aggressive, and I wanted a more tense, deliberate acting, brooding character to match the rest of the film’s tone, and that’s not how the character was written or directed.
The fight scenes did absolutely nothing for me. I found them distracting, pulling me out of the experience with what I imagine was intended to be exhibitions of slo-mo vampiric strength and speed, but was simply ham- handed, when those scenes should have had me at the edge of my seat.
Overall, it’s a serviceable vampire flick that tries too hard to have a moral of the story.
