‘It came with teeth,’ says the vampire-killing mentor to the young hero in this 2010 coming of age vampire-apocalypse film. First off the casting of this low budget film was very good and, I thought, the acting quality quite high. As are the films in this genre it is trope laden, and if you are a writer, you will see through the lineal plot easily.
The vampires are of the feral evolving kind which I prefer to the Anne Rice socialized vampires. It occurs to this writer that Stoker’s classic vampire has bifurcated into two lines, the feral and the social, where they existed side-by-side in his work. It is refreshing to see a genre where the master has yet to be topped, but only partially imitated. It gives the reader hope for a classic on the horizon.
Of course, I am a blockhead where films are concerned and tend to look at any story, in no matter what medium, as a piece of writing. In that sense, Stake Land is a good action-packed novella; something that Howard might have written, but with more atmospherics.
As a movie of its genre I see Stake Land as one of the more realistic depictions of a post apocalyptic world, something that might be intelligible to a survivalist as possible, as opposed to the more social commentary works such The Book of Eli. Stake Land is stark, and minus the rampaging vampires, charts a path through a believable dark age that might loom in a worst case future.
