MOVIE REVIEW: CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE’S ASSISTANT

CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE’S ASSISTANT

Four of Seven Cows

Oh, how I yearn for the days when vampires were actually monsters. Being the male of our species with a full complement of testosterone, I rarely yearn. Heck, I don’t often long, either. But movies like Twilight, this week’s Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, and HBO’s weekly show True Blood have me both yearning and longing for the days when vampires were blood-sucking, beguiling objects of dread instead of the morally-anguished romance-fodder they’ve become.

             

Seriously, when did we start letting fourteen-year-old girls write horror?

             

That’s not to say Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is a terrible film – it’s simply rather boring and un-scary. When high-school friends Darren and Steve go to the world’s longest-running freak show they are inducted into the world of vampires and other assorted “monsters” and freaks. This could have been pretty cool, but it’s not. Turns out the world of monsters isn’t really all that scary. Or interesting, for that matter.

             

The performances in Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant are mostly good, with one surprising exception. John C. Reilly gives the first sub-par performance of his career as vampire Larten Crepsley. Forget for a moment that Crepsley is a “good vampire” that doesn’t like to actually hurt anybody. A vampire with a conscience is enough of a bummer, but Reilly makes matters worse by delivering a stilted, wooden performance. In fact, it’s so stilted at times that it resembles exactly the kind of performance he so successfully parodied in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

           

I recognize that I’m not the target audience for Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, so take that into account. Apparently written by fourteen-year-old girls so that fifteen-year-old boys will have a movie to take them to this Halloween that’s less scary than the soon-to-be-released Michael Jackson documentary, I’m guessing it’s flaws will mostly go unnoticed.

           

Rated PG-13, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is a relatively mild affair, with some language and cartoon-like violence but not much else. Parents will probably find it dumb-beyond-belief, which it is, but it’s not really meant for them. For some true horror/fun they should see Zombieland, where the undead get hungry and the heart-throbs get eaten – as it should be.

             

Taking into account that this movie isn’t meant for me, I give Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant four starry-eyed, morally-conflicted, undead cows. Adults should probably subtract two cows.