Instant Trash: Vampire Conspiracy

Wow- just wow.  Did you ever watch Cube and say 'I wish that this was done on a super-tiny budget.  Oh yeah, I also like vampires- could you work those in for me too?'  No?  That was just me?  Okay, I guess so.  Vampire Conspiracy is a knock-off of Cube with a dash of Saw II, The House on Haunted Hill and Dracula thrown in.  Rhyme and reason don't really factor in that much here, so don't expect much of it.  Basically, a group of people end up in a twisted game of life and death.  Of course, more importantly, you should know that the film was made in 2005, but didn't get released until 2007!  Yeah, that's a bad sign, right?  Get out your magic doors for my review of...

The film begins with two guys running from something in a short corridor.  Get used to this location, since they clearly recycle it over and over again!  They discuss how to get away before a bunch of cheap-looking vampires come in.  They get cornered until the younger guy shoves the other man into the crow and runs off.  His trip is short-lived, however, as he is confronted by a more effete vampire and killed.  After the credits, we find...a group of people trapped in a room.  They spend roughly ten minutes arguing with each other and bitching.  Basically, they don't know each other, where they are or how they got there.  One of those assessments will seem silly soon enough.  After a bit of this, the effete vampire shows up.  He explains that he's a 250+ year-old vampire from France who has a problem with society.  To that end, he grabs random people, puts them in a maze and lets his vampire minions loose to kill them.  This leads to some 'oh no, you won't' and 'we'll stop you' that amounts to nothing.  Good- I was hoping you could be more pointless here.  Time to run.

Our heroes do their best to fend off the vampire horde and...actually do a pretty good job.  These guys are more of a pushover than the first guy to run at Bruce Lee in a fight scene.  In the next room, our heroes learn that they actually have a shared experience.  You see, one of them was a cop whose partner was killed in a drug bust.  One of the others is the brother of a drug dealer killed in this bust.  Yet another person in the group lost his daughter in the ensuing shoot-out.  Another person still worked as the lawyer for the drug dealer.  This revelation feels really stupid, unless you expect us to believe that they had their minds wiped or something.  'Oh yeah, I remember how you totally shot my brother- it just took a moment.'  Naturally, this leads to more bickering and fighting.  As a bonus, each room they go to has a message on it.  This apparently relates to some sort of biblical message.  Anyone care?

Do you really care all that much about what happens from this point on?  I mean, really?!?  They fight vampires, people die and the whole thing wraps up.  Moving on with my life...

This movie sucks- pun intended!  The plot is ridiculous, involving a bunch of people stuck in the same series of rooms whilst chased by vampires.  Nothing really all that interesting happens, so this movie feels like an endurance test.  It's just bitching, a bit of plot and more bitching.  The actual vampire action you get is pretty sub-par, mainly consisting of waving crosses/sticks around and posturing.  It's a bit of disappointment when compared to, well, just about every other vampire film ever made.  These guys have the hand-eye coordination of those weird, green vampire guys from Blacula!  The acting is not good.  If you've seen any local playhouse perform a drama, you've seen the full range of these people.  Some of them seem earnest and really try, while others just play to stereotypes.  Speaking of which, our villain is about as stock as all get-out. On top of that, we don't even get the real camp value of a French-accented villain.  Unless you're scared of 'goth guys,' you'll have nothing to fear here.  A great example of what this film lacks: they can't even do the 'lif the guy up off of the ground' effect.  They try to, but just edit around it.  When you fail at something like that, you fail in general.  This project won't stay dead, it seems.  The film took two years to get released on DVD and a comic book spin-off appeared in another two years.  It's not interesting!  Let it go!

Up next, my true endurance test begins- a week of Asylum films.  First up, a film about (Adrian) Sinbad and his quest to save the world from CG monsters and Monster stock footage.  Stay tuned...