Black as Night (2021)
The same summer I fought vampires.
I remember a while batch watching a movie called Vampires vs the Bronx after seeing a trailer that pitched a more horror-oriented The Goonies essentially. I remember having a lot of fun with it - but I don’t think that ever made it to being a review up on here (yeah, I know it’s unbelievable that a guy that watches a movie a week consistently would watch stuff in his spare time too but I do). Well, tonight I had a bit of free reign and timing to go after whatever in the world I wanted to - and my first thought was something like one of the currently making waves movies, but then I thought about all that subtitled reading I would need to do for 3 hours, and checked my “to watch” list on Amazon instead, where I came across this. That’s right, thanks to past me seeing this and going “that looks a bit like V vs B” we get to check out this kids versus vampires , New Orleans edition. Tonight we witness the girl Black as Night.
Real talk - I couldn’t come up with a better segue than that to the movie title, and it technically does still factor into one of the movie’s through-lines so I’m going to chalk it up as a win anyways. See, before I even get to my normal scheduled attempt at spoiler free plot dump, we’ll just get right down into the brass tacks for the thinking folks. There is a lot of commentary here - and I, being some middle aged white guy in the middle of the country am not really the target audience to really dive into it and elaborate. I can’t talk to the amount of pressure put on someone of dark skin to be “lighter” or the other way around - the problem with the middle of the country is there isn’t much variety in the folks you see on a day to day basis. I also can’t speak to the absolute devastation and upheaval of your world that large natural disasters such as hurricanes can cause, because the worst my state normally gets is snow storms. It’s also embroiled in the Black Lives Matter and general mistreatment of low income folks (particularly minorities). That said, for someone who is better equipped to deep dive on that stuff, I think they could really have fun sinking their teeth (haha!) into the way they might use the vampire situation to approach these various threads of self esteem and de-humanization of peoples and to what effect they manage it. For me, it’s nice that it’s there and it doesn’t really get super heavy into feeling preachy about it until the very end - which is more because of the classic villain monologue than anything else.
Our plot follows a girl on her most event-ridden summer, full of getting boobs and having to fight vampires. Those are her words by the way, her actual narrative-spoken indications of everything to come. Vampires are eating the homeless and drug-users, and when she’s walking home alone from a party she happens to get bit by one. What ensues is a plot of trying to get revenge on vampires, enlisting the help of her some friends old and new as her path inevitably crosses with the big bad responsible for the death of someone close to her. There’s a bunch of other little things snuck in there, like a mysterious stalker and that lovely teenage romance that always comes in movies with teens that are struggling with self-image and/or belonging. It’s not done badly, and facilitates the scenes and actors and events in a fine fashion, but it isn’t very great and disguising upcoming twists, and the only times you’ll find yourself truly surprised is when they play with what does and doesn’t work against vampires as they exist here.
The characters are all okay. They all have a surprising amount of room to grow, most dedicated to the main and her bestie, but also expanding out to her love interest. This doesn’t all feel like it translates into them becoming totally different characters by the end, but it makes for quite a well-played evolution of the characters coming to terms with their situation and themselves. Interactions between character feel surprisingly natural like, albeit occasionally hammed up for that movie grade happy ending sort of feel. I won’t say you’ll agree with all of their actions, but at the same time I feel we all tossed out our right to complain about “unrealistically dumb decisions” after 2020 and 2021.
Turn around, bright eyes….
The actors do a good job, but I do feel at times they might be a little constrained by possibly either the writing or the character they are trying to play. Keith Davids does a great job for example, but because the character he plays it can feel a bit more like scene chewing than him going after an award - but again, I don’t hold it against him since I feel more it’s just the movie itself is aiming for a specific thing. Our main younger characters all do a fine job, and people who watch more serial content (like television or streaming series) will probably recognize the older actors way more than I did. In honesty, the only one I recognized was Davids - and that’s more because of his voice than anything else. Considering the job they all did though, I would think the cast here - particularly the main ones - could really go some places if they choose to stick with acting as a career, especially if they can avoid getting type-cast.
Effects play a good part here. There’s some blood, and consistency wise I thinks it’s much more solid than a lot of the stuff I’ve seen in more recent times. That being said, the darkness levels of a lot of the situations make it somewhat difficult to make out the blood, so it somewhat helps to tone down the level of violence even if it’s (I think) still there and obscure it if it isn’t great looking. A great example is the opening scene, where I think they actually had a little hose-sprayer hooked up to one part of the victim like in a old kung-fu movie, but it’s so dark you aren’t entirely sure if you are seeing it or something else. That said, they get to have a lot of fun with the vampires, burning in the sun leads to some upper-body stunt burns, as well as object-oriented burns from things like silver and garlic. Of course, the first time a vampire gets staked it’s played perfect for laughs in timing, but the effect there is also pretty good. If I had to point out one thing in the movie for not looking great, it would actually be the burning body after the stunt burn as probably being the worst thing in there, so I don’t think too many should be disappointed unless they had wanted to see more stuff.
Audio isn’t my jam but good. It’s a lot of the stuff that i know a ton of people that like but I’ve just never gotten a taste for it - but it fits enough for what’s getting thrown on screen. The other bits do their usual role of supporting on screen elements and moods. Line deliveries are well done, and it’s all balanced pretty well. The settings are nice, as are the costumes - but I’ll also admit in the costume department it’s a modern day affair, so it’s not like you’ll be jumping at cool armor or something along those lines - but still some of the outfits are pretty fashionable looking.
The dynamic duo.
This one isn’t bad. I think there’s a good number of folks out there that would enjoy it doing something a little different than normal with vampires - and it’s a better love story than Twilight. Haha! You have no idea how I’ve been working to fit that in while writing all of this! Anyways, effects are good, stories good, acting is good, and the characters are good enough but leave room for improvement (some more than others). I feel that this would make a good companion piece to Vampires vs the Bronx as a double feature - it’s a bit like the Aliens to Bronx’s Alien - which isn’t to compare the two on qualities other than one being more action to the others more focused horror, I don’t want people getting mad when they expect some nostalgia fueled 10 out of 10 Aliens colonial marines action and instead get not-Buffy versus the crack vampires. Check it out, have some fun.