Stake Land (2010)
Directed by: Jim Mickle
Starring: Danielle Harris, Kelly McGillis, Connor Paolo, Nick Damici
Review by: Nia Edwards-Behi
The world has been ravaged by a disease that transforms people into vicious bloodsuckers. A teenager watches his family slaughtered and is rescued by the mysterious Mister, a tough vampire hunter who takes the boy under his wing. They hear word of New Eden, a haven where no vampires reside. They pick up more members to their rag-tag party as they travel across a broken country to reach New Eden. In doing so, they make enemies of a group of religious extremists, discovering that humans can be monsters too.
Frankly, this should have been a funny film. It’s still darkly comic, in parts, but Stake Land’s potential is not reached due to its tongue not being anywhere near its cheek. As such, the film takes itself far too seriously and severely suffers for it. There are only so many slow-motion shots of people turning and looking meaningfully into the middle-distance that I can handle in a film. The rag-tag-band-of-survivors-search-for-a-haven plot has been done and done again, and Stake Land offers little newness to the formula. The vampires aren’t vampires, but zombies with sharper teeth, which is significantly disappointing. Having said that, there are some enjoyably inventive moments with the zombie-vamps on offer, particularly in a nifty scene which sees the creatures dropped like bombs onto a vamp-free community.
Stake Land isn’t a particularly bad film, by any means. It looks beautiful. The characters aren’t unlikeable, but they’re tired types typical of such an apocalyptic road movie: the distant badass who nonetheless takes in the rookie orphan, and the nice but damaged girl that joins them. The only interesting addition to this cocktail is a nun, which is indicative of the film’s central concern of religious nut-jobbery causing all sorts of the trouble for those who are trying to survive the vampiric apocalypse. Unfortunately, the heavy-handed use of religious imagery gets boring very quickly, so by the fifth shot of a statue of the Virgin Mary, it’s hard not to laugh.
For me, Stake Land is a missed opportunity. It’s too unoriginal to get away with being quite so earnest about everything, a healthy dose of knowing humour is desperately required to make the film as effective as it seems to think it is.
Editor’s note – Nia saw quite a few more films at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, so keep an eye out for more reviews in the near future.