Stake Land

Stake Land a movie about vampires that look like zombies and sound like werewolves. In fact if they hadn't been explicitly explained to be vampires and often killed with stakes I wouldn't have known.

So this movie wasn't like a big thing despite all the praise on the picture above. I'd never heard anything about it till randomly deciding to look for horror movies one day. And I wanna comment about that really quick; "American horror film of the year" this movie should not be called horror. It is not at all scary. It doesn't even have things pop out then call surprising scary. So it's not even incorrectly scary. Anyway that rant aside I'll continue.

Plot
The film centers around two main characters; Martin a 16 year old who has his parent slaughtered by a vampire right in front of him, and Mister an otherwise nameless guy who is apparently the authority on kicking undead ass and takes the newly orphaned Martin under his wing at the request of the dying father. The only really plot is the two trying to survive the ruined world as Mister teaches Martin the ways of making the undead redead so that they'll stay dead. Along the way they have a few others join their group as they attempt to reach some fabled safe region see I am legend for more information about this plot point.

So is it good? It's okay. It's not great. It's certainly not deserving of all that praise on the picture up there and I almost used a different one but it was the best picture I could find. I find myself in an odd position on this movie. I really like the world the movie happens in I just don't really like the movie that happens.

***The following paragraph contains some very minor spoilers though nothing that would ruin the movie***

Allow me to elaborate. The atmosphere of the movie is really good. I enjoyed seeing things like trading vampire teeth and weed and prescription drugs for goods at the various human settlements. I really enjoyed seeing the crazy cultists who worshiped the vampires and even would sacrifice people to them. The different variants of vampires was also a cool concept though I think it was a little underused and could have been made better with more differentiated vampires showing up more commonly.

***Even minor spoilers over***

So it's a great world I just wish the story in it had been more interesting.

7 not-vampires being called vampires out of 10