Name: The Thirst (2007)
IMDb: link to The Thirst page
Genres: Horror Country of origin: USA
Cast: Matt Keeslar (Dune, Rose Red) as Maxx, Clare Kramer (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as Lisa, Jeremy Sisto (Law and Order) as Darius, Serena Scott Thomas (The World Is Not Enough) as Mariel, Adam Baldwin (Firefly, Full Metal Jacket) as Lenny.
Directed by: Jeremy Kasten. Written by: Ben Lustig (story), Liz Maccie (screenplay).
The Three Acts:
The initial tableaux:
Drug addicted couple (Maxx and Lisa) are going in opposite directions. He's clean and in a 12-step group. She's still using. Lisa starts puking blood and collapses while doing a strip tease. The drug addiction was on top of her advancing terminal cancer, which she can no longer hide from Maxx.
Lisa commits suicide, or so it would seem. When his friends invite Maxx to a goth club some days after the funeral, he sees Lisa at the club. He returns later and finds her and a nest of hungry vampires. Lisa soon converts Maxx.
Delineation of conflicts:
The notion of trading one obsession (drugs) for another (blood sucking) is explored to some extent. Lisa and Maxx try to control their blood lust. This does not go well.
Their attempt to adapt to vampire life was replaced by an effort to stop the family (the nest of vampires) at any cost. The other vampires are not pleased with that part.
Resolution: Do the protagonists embrace vampire values and settle into vampire lifestyle, or do they align themselves to human values? They do make a choice.
One line summary: Substituting vampirism for drug abuse.
Statistics:
Cinematography: 4/10 Insufficient lighting, soft focus, grainy final presentation. There's a bit of jerkiness from the low light and cameras that cannot handle it.
Sound: 10/10 The film had several background tracks that were witty and fitting.
Screenplay: 3/10 Poor. The fifteen minutes of story was stretched too far to get an 88 minute runtime. The exposition of motivations was terrible.
Acting: 3/10 So many actors, so many bad performances! Jeremy Sisto (the reason I quit watching Law and Order) disappointed even more than usual, and the coming and going of his various accents was irritating. Clare Kramer (a major reason I stopped watching Buffy) was marginally better than I thought she would be. After Firefly, Adam Baldwin has been a favourite, and he did not disappoint me here. The rest of the actors were forgettable at best.
Special Effects: 0/10 Abysmal. The blood sprays and the bursting into flames are laughable. Blood sprays are all too common, and quite over the top in poor execution. The fact that they are done in such a ridiculous way eliminates any serious tone to the film that might have been intended. Seeing the tube that feeds the red fluid on Keeslar's back 60 minutes into the film was an amazing gaffe.
Final Rating: 2/10 Awesomely bad: three black holes for acting, screenplay, SFX.
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