It's Day 294 of my One Movie a Day for 2023, and Day 21 of both my own 31 Days of Hallowe'en project as well as the 31 Days of Horror Challenge being hosted by Nightmare on Film Street. Plus, can not forget to mention the 100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge I joined this year.
And this has been the part of the post where I tell you every time, that normally on my old social medias for the last decade, I would do a 13 Days of Hallowe'en, that ran from the 19th-31st of October, where I would do movie reviews, recipes and comedy skits. But, this year I'm keeping it simple just on this site and my Letterboxd.
For my own 31 Days of Hallowe'en project, today's mini theme is Zombies. I picked After Effect.
A group of college students apply for a blind medical test, only to learn it's being run by the military in order to create a better bio-solider. Soon, they start to exhibit extreme strength, bloodlust and are unable to be reasoned with as they begin to hunt each other.
Okay, so we've seen this plot a million times before, and it is beyond stale at this point. I found it could have taken ten minutes off the beginning and it still would have had the same plot. It spends a bit too long setting up things for the main characters, only to go nowhere with it later on.
Today's challenge for the 31 Days of Horror being hosted by Nightmare On Film Street, is a movie by Guillermo de Toro. I picked Blade 2.
Blade is recruited to help a group of vampires battle something that is hunting them. A new breed that feeds only on other vampires. As he comes face to face with the leader of this new breed, he learns the creature was created in a lab and the mad scientist is someone in high power within the vampire community.
This has a crispness that the other two installments in the franchise do not. The look and feel of this one is hyper hypnotic, as we follow the characters through the underground raves, caves and back alleys of Europe. It works as part of the franchise, but it works even better as a stand alone film. You're given just enough at the beginning to catch up on the first movie if you missed it, and then it becomes it's own thing.
This movie plays with the ideas of most of the major classic monsters, we've got vampires, a creature created in a lab, a mad scientist and a few zombie like creatures. It's all self contained within it's reality. We've even got a Renfield/Igor character in the form of Scud, who is a familiar.
Come back tomorrow to see what other tricks and treats are on the slab.
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