By Dan Skip Allen

Lately, the vampire genre has had a bit of a resurgence. Most recently, with the remake of “Dracula” and “Sinners” to name a couple. This sub-genre of horror hasn’t always taken itself seriously with films like “Love at First Bite” , “Vampire in Brooklyn,” and “Dracula: Dead and Loving It” among their ranks. The latest vampire comedy that doesn’t take itself very seriously is “Vampires of the Velvet Lounge.” As a fan of horror films, I didn’t take this schlock fest seriously either. Because it’s not a good movie, funny or otherwise. That’s sad because there is a decent cast of B list actors in this film.

Dichen Lackman is an FBI agent who lives with her girlfriend, played by Rosa Salazar. She is an undercover agent portraying a potential date for a woman, Countess Elizabeth Bathory (Mena Suvari), on a dating app. Her and her friends run a nightclub and use dating apps to find potential victims for their real activities as vampires. These dating apps are perfect to get men looking for company. Men like Stephen Dorff, Tyrese Gibson, and Lachlan Munro. What they don’t know is that these belong to a coven praying on lonely men. Many of these encounters lead to bloody and gore situations for everyone involved.

There is one specific thing about this film that I want to highlight. That is the cinematography by David Newbert. He was able to capture the nighttime scenes very well. Whether or not the scenes took place in the Velvet Lounge, another nightclub, or on the streets where the movie took place, he lit the scenes beautifully. He used various colored lights and other kinds of lighting to give this film a specific look. I loved the look of the movie. It reminded me of some other cinematography that struck me. That of the John Wick franchise by cinematographer Dan Lausten. He’s one of the best in the business, so trying to copy his style is a good thing. The purple and reds jumped off the screen. Which is why I love it so much.

On the other hand, one thing that wasn’t very good was the screenplay. The script of this movie wasn’t very good. Many of the lines of dialogue fell flat and made me roll my eyes. The campy nature of the film made the dialogue come across badly. The whole idea of the film is a bit preposterous to begin with. Adam Sherman, the writer/ director, it seemed to me that he has seen too many vampire films for his own good. He uses way too many tropes in the story, which translates to the dialogue from the cast. Even though these are what I’d call the best actors, some of them have done some good work in the past. They come across as pretty bad considering the script they have to use. That’s the beginning of the problems this movie has.

Even though I like some of the cast members like Stephen Dorff, Mina Suvari Rosa Salazar, and Dichen Lackman. I have to admit they are not doing their best work here. Combined with the script and tropes that go along with vampire films that are a bit tired and overdone, they can’t do much to save this film. Sherman didn’t do them any favors. Most of them, specifically Dorff, gave over the top performances. He gets turned about halfway through the film and starts carrying on more than he should. He’s not the only one either. Suvari, as the head of the coven of vampires, plays this role a bit over the top as well. I understand what they were going for, but it just didn’t work for me.

There are a lot of bloody action sequences that occur during this movie. A few fight scenes and vampire tropes combined for a lot of gore and bloody craziness. With any vampire film, you know you’re going to get a lot of  death and destruction. Characters get killed in many different ways. The creative ways characters die are funny and disgusting alike. Many different weapons and creative ways made the movie interesting to a point. I laughed a lot at the campiness, but it was more of rolling my eyes at how ridiculous some of this stuff was. I guess some vampire films can’t always be serious, but hopefully, they will be good. This one is neither serious nor funny, even though I did laugh at some of its absurdity. I wasn’t laughing with it. I was laughing at it. That’s not a good thing.

The concept of online dating is a bit foreign to me, but I have had a few friends who have found wives using online dating. The concept of this as a way to get victims was a bit farfetched for me. If this is the main plot device besides vampires, I think it’s a bad idea. With that being said then the whole film collapses because of that idea. Sherman put all his chips in the middle of the ring with this idea, and It’s a bad idea from my point of view. With the bad script and over the top acting from the cast of C actors, this film doesn’t amount to much. Vampire films have been done a little too much lately. Maybe it’s time to put them to sleep for a while. Pun intended. I’ve had enough of vampire films for a while.

1 star