Review by Ben Bussey
Let it never be said that we have run out of ways to do vampire movies. It has long seemed that just about every new movie that comes along which centres on the blood-drinking undead brings with it widespread grumbles from critics and fans alike about how we’ve seen it all before, everyone’s run out of ideas, and so on and so forth. Well, one thing I should hope most of us will be able to agree on about Summer of Blood is that we haven’t seen another vampire film quite like it. That much we can safely say. As to whether or not writer-director-actor Onur Tukel’s take on the undead in arty intellectual New York hipsterville will be to all tastes is another matter entirely.
Summer of Blood can be summed up with a simple description which I will be neither the first nor the last to use: this is what we’d get if Woody Allen made a vampire movie. There’d be some minor differences, for sure; all the jokes about being Turkish would instead be jokes about being Jewish, and somehow I can’t imagine (or perhaps just don’t want to imagine) Allen filming quite so many sex scenes featuring himself, but otherwise it’s pretty much all present and correct: the simple, almost fly on the wall camerawork, the verbose dialogue heavy with intellectual posturing, the situational comedy centring on a protagonist with glaring personal problems, and of course the affluent New York setting. I can’t imagine Onur Tukel (a filmmaker I must admit to being completely ignorant of before now, though he’s been in the business since the 90s) would play coy about this influence either; while we’re more accustomed in the horror scene to coming across new movies which delight in using John Carpenter’s font in their opening titles, Tukel uses the same font as Allen in his similarly minimalistic opening title card and end credits. Now, if you’re an admirer of vintage Woody Allen, and regard him one of the most singular, personal and interesting American filmmakers of the past forty years, then you may well be able to appreciate what Tukel has come up with here. If, on the other hand, you find Allen’s work pretentious, self-important and boring, I think I can make an educated guess as to how you’ll find Summer of Blood.
Tukel is Eric, an unkempt, unmotivated 40 year old (same age Woody Allen’s character was in Annie Hall, I find myself compelled to note) who we meet in the process of messing up a long-term relationship with Sam (Vanna Pilgrim), who – again, in the Allen tradition – is quite clearly out of his league with no particular discernible reason to be attracted to him. It seems Eric has a hard time committing to anything, be it his girlfriend, his job, or life in general, and while his smugness, superiority complex and lack of social awareness are obvious from the moment he first appears on screen, we only get to realise just how emotionally detached he is by his utterly blase reaction to finding a man bleeding to death in the street from a gaping wound in his neck. Not giving a second thought to that matter, Eric tries his hand at internet dating, more out of his desperation for sex than any sort of wish for companionship. Unsurprisingly he has little success, nor do his unsubtle attempts to woo a co-worker (Dakota Goldhor) result in anything but moments of painful awkwardness. Yet everything changes when Eric unwittingly crosses paths with the mysterious European guy who would appear to have been responsible for the wounded man he encountered several nights before. A bite to the neck later, Eric’s energy levels are up, he’s way better at wooing the ladies, and he’s infinitely better in the sack – but, of course, this comes at the price of him struggling to function in the daytime, and being overwhelmed by the thirst for human blood.
Looking at the DVD cover art (and doing our best to turn a blind eye to the rather ugly photoshopping – okay, that’s Tukel’s head, but those particular women never appear in the film), it’s interesting to note that, rather than the more expected overly enthusiastic review quotes we instead have declarations of the lead protagonist’s socially awkward and unsympathetic nature. An earlier poster took a similar tactic, placing Tukel’s image front and centre and littering the background with review quotes emphasising how utterly contemptible his character is – and a brief web search would seem to confirm there are those who think much the same of Tukel himself (again, as with Woody Allen the line between the character and the real man seems thin). I suppose this would serve to underline that – as with, say, the characters of Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais (yes, at last, a reference point that isn’t Woody Allen) – we’re not necessarily supposed to like this guy. Indeed, I’m sure we can all name plenty of much-loved films which boast central protagonists who are less than sympathetic. And yet, Summer of Blood is really, really pushing it. Anti-hero schlubs generally have a certain charm to them, leaving the viewer rooting for the character despite themselves, but I for one really struggled find anything remotely likeable about Tukel’s Eric. I suppose the primary reason for this is that, while Summer of Blood is first and foremost a comedy, I just didn’t find the guy at all funny. This, naturally, is a bit of a stumbling block, and given that he’s on screen for more or less the duration of the film, it makes it rather difficult to get at all invested in his journey from asshole loser to asshole vampire sex god – and makes it rather unconvincing when, seemingly out of nowhere, he undergoes a third act crisis of conscience.
The phrase ‘Marmite movie’ comes to mind. Summer of Blood is not a film that’s going to leave much middle ground, and while from a critical perspective I can find plenty to appreciate (it is well acted, well shot and well edited, making the most of what would appear to be a very low budget), as a viewer I found very little to really enjoy; the lead character’s detestability just seemed to permeate the entire film. There are interesting elements for sure; some may find the film offers a sardonic commentary on modern sexual politics, particularly with the hints at Eric’s latent homosexual impulses. And who knows; some may even find Eric endearing. For myself, I struggled to find the film overall to be any different to its protagonist: smug, self-important, and nowhere near as funny or charming as it seems to think it is. The only other thing I’d add is my surprise at it being slapped with an 18 certificate; the gore isn’t that harsh, the sex scenes are tongue-in-cheek and hardly explicit, and the dialogue is no more ribald than any number of 15-rated comedies we could name.
Summer of Blood is released to UK DVD and Blu-ray on 23rd February 2015, from Monster Pictures.