John’s Horror Corner: Bloodsucking Bastards (2015), a rather generic horror comedy about a vampire takeover in the office.
MY CALL: With such a great cast, this movie felt like a huge missed opportunity. This is a low-priority rental for an afternoon and nothing more. Watchable, but not recommended. Fun, but not that fun.
MORE MOVIES LIKE Bloodsucking Bastards: For more horror comedies try Critters (1986), Blood Diner (1987), Frankenhooker (1990), Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh (1991), Leprechaun (1993), Head of the Family (1996), American Psycho (2000), Shaun of the Dead (2004), Black Sheep (2006), Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), Piranha 3D (2010), Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010), Final Destination 5 (2011), Chillerama (2011), Piranha 3DD (2012), Grabbers (2012), The Cabin in the Woods (2012), Bad Milo (2013), Warm Bodies (2013), Burying the Ex (2014), Smothered (2014), What We Do in the Shadows (2014), Cooties (2015), Deathgasm (2015), Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015), Housebound (2014), Zombeavers (2014), The Voices (2014), He Never Died (2015), Ava’s Possessions (2015), The Final Girls (2015), Krampus (2015; not exactly comedy, but occasionally hilarious), Love in the Time of Monsters (2015), The Greasy Strangler (2016), Mayhem (2017), Happy Death Day (2017) and The Babysitter (2017).
Amid a typical sales office, Evan’s (Fran Kranz; The Cabin in the Woods, The Village, Donnie Darko) world is falling apart. He lost his girlfriend, on old college rival (Pedro Pascal; Game of Thrones) snatched his promotion out from under him, and his coworkers are being brutally murdered and replaced by vampires.
Between the premise and the cast, I was really excited to see this and bought the DVD blindly. I don’t exactly regret that, but this movie was not the exceptional delight for which I hoped.
Director Brian James O’Connell delivers a movie that is moderately fun and breezy. It’s not great, but it’s a nice way to spend a lazy afternoon. I never really felt any sense of urgency (even during the vampire killing scenes), shock or scale (it all takes place in the office), nor were the jokes ever laugh out loud affairs. Just a lot of grins and a few giggles.
Pedro Pascal is entertaining, but still he feels like he’s phoning it in. The real performance efforts come from Joey Kern (Cabin Fever), Emma Fitzpatrick (The Collection) and Fran Kranz. The gore, wounds and blood are not abundant except for a few scenes, but it’s nice when you see your heroes unexpectedly blood-doused a la What We Do in the Shadows (2014). But with that said, the gore is mostly blood and largely limited to the last 30 minutes.
For me, the greatest victory was adding to my lexiconical sense of “office horror” movies. And by that, I mean things like Mayhem (2017), The Belko Experiment (2016) or other fare discussed in our Office Horror podcast episode. Otherwise, this film is hard to recommend. You may have noticed this is a very short review for me… I guess I just don’t have much to say about it (good or bad).
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- John’s Horror Corner: Dead Snow 2: Red vs Dead (2014; aka Død Snø 2), more innovative use of intestines, more chunky gross head-smashing and more Nazi zombie killing equal more slapstick hilarity. | Movies, Films & Flix
- John’s Horror Corner: The Collection (2012), a lousy attempt at a “horror action” sequel to the much better Collector (2009). | Movies, Films & Flix
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I found this movie to be pretty forgettable, I really enjoyed Fran Kranz in “Cabin in the Woods” and I thought Joel Murray (Bill’s brother) was outstanding in “God Bless America” by I thought both actors were very underutilized. I personally felt that “Mayhem” was forgettable too, but it was a lot better than this. 😛
Yeah, everyone, everything, almost every idea felt squandered or, at the very least, undeveloped. It’s like this was rushed out just for the sake of having it done, rather than done well.
I also noticed the cinematography felt kind of shoddy and the colors seemed washed out and ugly. I, too, thought the movie was going to be a lot of fun, but I was sorely mistaken. I think my dad actually fell asleep while we were watching it. 😛