Hey! Look at what we have here. The jaded viewer actually reads a book! Yes, I do read on occasion. I got this book for free for being a VIP after visiting Nightmare: Vampires, a haunted house in NYC.
So yes, it took me about 3 months to read a book. Well it was 400 pages so it was kind a long. But I'm glad I finished it. It's what you call a blockbuster action book. Pure Reading Rainbow, out of this world escapism at its best.
Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan co-wrote a solid novel, that easily reads from page to page and is filled with haunting visuals, NYC under attack from a deadly plague of vampirism and characters that are very real and very relatable.
The story is classic vamp noir. A plane lands in NYC unknown to the public that the Master, an ancient rogue vampire has set foot in NYC and unleashed the deadliest strain of a disease that has no cure. The vampires described are the non sparkly kind. Very reminiscent of the "Reapers" in Del Toro's Blade 2, they are demon-ish, their organs and innards become all squishy and reconfigured and they have "satin red eyes" and mandible mouths with stingers.
Bent on stopping this new undead army is Dr. Ephraim Goodweather of the CDC, his partner Nora and a mysterious old man named Abraham Setrakian who knows more about the Master and the upcoming plague.
It's a very Blade-like story, but I think the elements of the book that shined for me were the detailed passages about how individual New Yorkers experienced, coped and survived the outbreak. The back story of Setrakian is also compelling as is the family dynamic of Eph. But being a born and bred New Yorker, the descriptions of NYC are dead on. From Queens to Brooklyn to the Bronx, each description of the city were 100% accurate.
The Strain is the first of a trilogy, with The Fall due out this year and The Night External as the last chapter. If your looking to escape those sparkly vamps, priest vamps, tween vamps and vampires that may or may not be gay, then get infected by The Strain.
First, I'd like to thank Tim and Rebeca Haskell for allowing me and my friends Rene from EntertainingEvil.com and his wife to experience a hell of a ride yesterday. It may be 30 days before Halloween but I got my scare on early. If you've arrived on the jaded viewer for the first time because of my initial coverage of Nightmare: Vampires from the press area of the official site, this is the post you've been waiting for. This is where I share my thoughts, reactions and whimpers of the whole damn thing.
Let me say straight out, I'm not going to reveal "the scares" or the twists and turns of Nightmare because, well it would just ruin the entire damn thing for you. What I'll try to explain is the feel, the look and the wonder of why this is the best haunted house experience you'll get this year.
Nightmare: Vampires is a live action, ARG of horror nightmares come to life. It's an uber sensory overload that heightens your hearing, vision, smell, touch and taste. You will scream, shout, laugh and be utterly mesmerized by the brilliance of each and every room. This isn't your Twilight vamps looking for misguided love folks. This is your legendary bloodsuckers and mythos vampires, living and breathing right in front of your face. Believe me, it's not for the faint of heart. You know the old saying from Dawn of the Dead: "When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth". Well, that just describes this awesome haunted house in a nutshell.
Now in its sixth year and at a new location, NIGHTMARE’S fully immersive haunted house takes haunting to a whole new level. Get ready to play your part in NIGHTMARE: VAMPIRES, a unique haunted attraction that unfolds as an original horror story! Set in the Museum of Vampyric Artifacts (MoVa), the world's first vampire museum features antiquities related to vampires from the headlines, in the media and from around the world. However, when MoVa and everyone in it are attacked by blood-lusting maniacs, you won’t just be viewing the exhibits on display…you’ll be running from them! Witness the birth of a new vampire legend!
As the description above says, you enter the fictional MoVA, where you learn more about the legend of the vampyres. From then on, it's on. If you have a cross, it's time to put it on.
Each room is a sight to behold. I decided to go and walk slowly and admire each carefully crafted set. If you decide to go, I suggest you do the same. The props, scenery and displays of horrific memorabilia are works of art. You will have never seen anything like it before. Think Saw sets, Dario Argento backdrops and churches on LSD. You can tell that the Haskell and his entire crew detailed everything to the minutia so that each room had a different look and feel of horror bliss.
OK, I know you've been waiting for me to write what the scares are like. Well you're not going to get anything from me. Let me just say, part of the brilliance of Nightmare is that it doesn't matter if you decide to be the first one to enter the room or the last. You're going to get so frightened you'll bump into the stranger next to you as you stagger back into the arms of your significant other.
After the tour had ended, I got to talk to Tim Haskell and he feels like this is one of his best years for the haunted house. But he also added they have a motto for the actors and that's "Don't just scare the girls". And these professionals are equal opportunity scarers. I guarantee even the alpha male manliest man will get the shit scared out of him at least once. I'll admit I did. You never know when its coming and as I examined each and every part of the room, I once almost #2-ed into my pants.
That's not to say there isn't something funny about it all. I was making snarky remarks to my friends and to the group of strangers who were with us in our "tour group". I was even addressing my remarks to the maniacs, crazies, vamped up ravers and insane asylum prisoners hoping I'd get a reaction. (BTW, one of the rules is the actors can't touch you and vice versa). Note to self. Don't do that. You'll get more than you bargained for.
To get the whole experience, you have to cowboy up and be brave. Standing in the middle of the pack is going to be a letdown if you don't interact with what's in each room. The actors are very effective in their ninja skills, their sideshow carnival shows and their yelling and screaming. Only once did I get some dialogue from the show. In addition, darkness is your ultimate mortal enemy in Nightmares. In comes into play in some interesting ways from room to room.
But what separates this mature rated haunted house experience from the others is the story. Sure, other haunted houses may touch you or jump out in a hockey mask or even gross you out with live pig intestines but at the end of the day, a perfectly crafted story gets you wrapped up with whats going on. And its 1 billion times more effective when you're a participant in the story! That's the genius of Nightmares: Vampires. It really is like a live action alternate reality game where you play your part acting as pseudo"unfortunate teenagers" who must escape from the now chaotic museum.
I had never been to Tim Haskell's Nightmare haunted house before. I did hear about it but it's one of those things that if you're a New Yorker, you think you'll eventually go to sooner or later. I'm glad it was sooner. It can break the monotony of the week and is just as effective as watching a horror movie in Real 3D. The only difference is this 3D is living and breathing and getting your heart racing a million beats per second.
You are missing out if you don't partake in Nightmare: Vampires. If you're too scared too go, I'm sure if you dress up as Buffy or Van Helsing or Blade you'll be fine. Start carving your stakes, shining your silver and get your holy water ready. But please, leave the garlic at home.
The house opens on September 25th and runs to November 7th. It's located at the NOHO Event Center on 623 Broadway at Houston (enter on Mercer Street). Tickets are $30 (advance) or $35 at the door. More info here.
For more info head over to the official site. For some behind the scenes stuff, check out Tim Haskell's blog at iscareyou.com.
**If you decide to go...**
Getting the VIP tickets saves on time and the long line that's to be expected as we get closer to Halloween. Plus you get an awesome gift bag.
I went yesterday and got Guillermo Del Toro's vampire novel, The Strain!
Thicker Than Water: The Vampire Diaries Part 1 (2008)
Directed by Phil Messerer
Fuck zombies.
With all the Twilight hoopla and Let the Right One In, I predict a big renaissance in the vampire genre. But you won't see this in Hollywood in a big BOOM overnight.
Where you will see it is the college radio station world of independent horror.
Mark my words. When Hollywood starts surfing the horror interweb and sees praise for a movie like Thicker Than Water from the indie horror blogs, they are going to think they've hit the fuckin pot of gold.
Because this movie is a damn good movie to sink your teeth into (sorry for the bad pun).
Thicker Than Water: The Vampire Diaries Part 1 is a black horror-omedy that puts the function in dysfunctional. It's a credit to Phil Messerer who was sort of of a jack of all trades (who wrote, edited and directed) this indie masterpiece.
It's a radical little horror Lifetime movie of the week that could be part HBO TV show (look out True Blood!) and part music video. All I can say is it's a damn good movie.
Boring Plot-O-Matic Thicker Than Water is the first part in the Vampire Diaries Trilogy. It tells the story of the Baxters, an ordinary suburban family whose world is turned upside down when their youngest becomes a vampire. Lara, a precocious teenage Goth, hates her wholesome sister, Helen. She envies her popularity, her looks and most of all, her mother's pride and affection.
One day, after their 16th Birthday party, during which she is particularly humiliated by her sister's friends, Lara performs an intricate ritual in front of her Anne Rice alter involving a Margie doll and calf's heart. The next morning Helen awakens with a severe nosebleed. Then she dies in her sister's horrified arms. The family is desperately grief stricken. Lara is filled with guilt, Mom with philosophical anguish and Raymond, the gay neuro-scientist brother, with curiosity, as he discovers a strange virus in Helen's blood: one that feeds on red blood cells.
Suddenly there is a knock on the door. Helen, still wearing her white body bag, is standing outside, covered in blood. It is clear that all is not well with their resurrected family member. For one thing, she requires human blood as sustenance. The family realize they must find 'sacrifices' to keep her alive. But the vegetarian cheerleader refuses to feed. She suffers gut-wrenching blood withdrawals until she blacks out and rips her victims to shreds. The first 'sacrifices' are a pair of Mormon missionaries doing the local rounds. After that it is pretty much up to Raymond, who cruises the local gay bars in search of prey.
With their world crumbling around them, the Baxters find themselves lulled into atrocity, the daily carnage destroying their sense of morality while bringing them closer together as a family. And how did Helen become a vampire? What exactly are vampires? Forget everything you think you know and get ready for a completely original retelling of the most ancient of myths.
Awesome Review-O-Matic For a movie that runs a little less than 90 minutes, Thicker than Water packs a lot into this little juicebox. The Cooperstown small town feel (it's Sugar Loaf, NY) , the believable yet quirky characters, the vampire mythos and the blood, splatter and gore are perfectly blended into a milkshake of horror goodness.
I originally expcted to see a possibly MST3K worthy, shot on video amateur, local theatre group kids making a YouTubey horror film. But TTW is none of that. Yes, there is a low budget, grindhousey feel of the movie. However, that's soon forgotten when you see how this movie is shot, tightly edited and performances by the cast that are not amateurish at all.
Throw your expectations out the window, this is one fun hell of a ride.
Welcome to the Baxter household. Let's meet the family.
We've got Lara (Eilis Cahill), our narrator and total outcast, goth Anne Ricey vixen. She's the vampire lore expert. On the total opposite end of the family spectrum is Helen (Devon Bailey), the cheerleader-ish, blonde, beautiful, popular girly girl. We also meet their brother Raymond (Michael Strelow), a gay scientist and part time mad doctor. Also, we meet Dad who goes divorce AWOL early on which leaves us finally with Mom (Jo Jo Hristova), the former Bulgarian ice skater religious momma.
It's your typical family not normal family but whose family is. These are not the Beavers or the Bradys. More so the Munsters on LSD.
After Lara goes all Voodoo weirdo (a great The Craft-y homage) Helen wakes up with a vicious nosebleed. Soon she's gone to the great beyond. Raymond soon discovers Helen's blood is gone all virusey (nope not Swine Flu) and tells the family. But a knock from the door sees Helen back, body bag covered and all and drenched in blood.
Let the hilarity ensue.
From here the movie gets into Heathers like territory. The family starts to feed Helen with a variety of victim fodder. Two Mormons, Raymond's gay one night stands and others become food for our hungry, bood thirsty Helen.
A lot of the "kills" are done montagey in that Rob Zombie music video sort of way. I must admit, it seemed kinda tacky but I didn't mind.
The performances by Cahill and Bailey are right on point. Cahill has that Winona Ryder Burtonized look to her and black humor logues her performance like Ryder's Veronica character in Heathers. Bailey, the unlikely vampire puts a nice, sweet virtuous spin on her character going all puppy dog eyes as she stares at a soon to be yummy victim. These were both top notch performances that could even make True Blood look cheesy.
Later, we get the Interview with a Vampire cameo when the mysterious Patrice Duchamp III (who looks like a 1800s throwback puffy shirt and all) to recruit our newborn vampire Helen.
This all leads to a Christmas dinner, a twisty twizzler and an ending that lives up to the dysfunction of this entire family.
Interspliced within the flick are explanations of the 1st vampire and the mythology of pure bloods, etc. This is probably a set up in the eventual sequels of this proposed trilogy. Even in these Wikipedia scenes I was still intrigued and interested by how this vampire lore will play out.
With all the heaping amounts of praise, there were a few gripes that seeped in. The look is definitely low budget and some angles were a bit too cinematically overused. Aside from Cahill and Bailey, the other actors were a bit cardboardy though mediocre at best. Even the gore and splatter had moments of FAIL. Though that can be forgiven as it's not like they went to the Tom Savini school or splatter.
But the biggest screeching tire is the slow pace of the first 30 minutes and some drag in between. Though, in some low budget movies, the filmmaker stretches what should be a 8-10 minute scene into a punch me in the face 15-17 minutes. Thank Lestat, Messerer didn't do that too much.
All in all, The Vampire Diaries is a complete and awesome debut from Messerer. If he can learn from his mistakes (which are few) Part 2 of the Vampire Diaries will be spectacutastic. I can't begin to applaud filmmakers who go after their dream and make a movie. This is why we should support the indie scene, horror or non horror alike.
It's rare when a movie like Thicker Than Water: The Vampire Diaries surprises even a jaded viewer like myself. And when you do, that's saying a lot.
Gore-ipedia
Blood drenching Neck trauma Face removal
Nude-ipedia
Nada WTF moment The ending
The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis
The movie is on the film festival circuit and is kickin ass and winning awards. According to the official website it took 3 years to make.
If somehow you can see this movie, do so.
I first heard about this movie from The Bone Breaker and after watching the trailer I was psyched.
Thanks to the director Phil Messerer for sending me a screener of the film.
I guarantee I've totally Nostradamused this vampire boom. Trust me.
The Strain 
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