Topical Ponderings: Social Satire and the Questioning Reader

Should every work of art offer a shocking insight into the current cultural zeitgeist, or is perhaps an exploration of the inner life more important? To begin this deep and probing search, I shall examine a very odd film by the much loved director of Back to the Future, Bob Gale.

Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road manages extraordinarily to be even stranger than Gale's earlier time travelling extravaganzas, and perhaps sometimes gets lost in its own oddness. The tone is uneven and it uncomfortably vacillates between bildungroman and social satire, only really excelling when focusing on the latter. James Marsden's performance as our hero Neil Oliver often falls a little flat, and his quest to meet the ethereal girl he obsessively draws is unrealistic to say the least. But some little gems emerge nevertheless as Oliver journeys down the eponymous road (that doesn't exist). We are presented with the predicament of a town where the crime rate has been kept down by legalizing highly addictive drugs which kill the sex drive and essentially makes addicts slaves to the Government. Metaphor for late capitalist consumerism anyone? The scenario has been stolen from the barely readable Naked Lunch if I remember correctly, but it's still impactful.

Aldous Huxley has infinite amounts of fun toying with drugs in Brave New World, with the World Controllers using some bizarre form of hypnotism whilst people sleep to encourage them to taken Soma, a hallucinogenic without all the unpleasant side effects. The idea is that when our sulky hero, Bernard Marx, has all his depressing ideas, he should take the drug to achieve short term happiness. After all, "everyone is happy now". Of course everyone only thinks they're happy and Bernard Marx chooses to grumble rather than take Soma. 
It's not hard to make the leap to a society where buying the latest consumer goods and satisfying all kinds of desires at every turn prevents any serious thought or questioning of the ruling powers. And as David Mitchell astutely predicted in Cloud Atlas, the human hunger for more will remain insatiable, possibly leading to our destruction, but conveniently encouraging free people to give their consent to be enslaved by society.
These are both interesting works, fantastical yet cerebral, and hopefully encouraging us not to be so lethargic about living and question things more often. But is this all that makes a great work?
The Waves by Virginia Woolf is a very good book, for some the culmination of a run of experimental novels which began with the famous Mrs Dalloway. But aside from a few cheeky pot shots at empire (imperial hero Percival dies by falling off a horse, all of the characters take this very seriously but it's easy to see the irony), there's not a lot in the way of social criticism. Even if there was, would what was radical in its time still be radical more or less 100 years later. In the case of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Howard's End and The Great Gatsby yes, but in most cases probably not.

If so, what makes The Waves great? Many would say its experimental style. It's written in prose that feels more like poetry, consisting almost entirely of "dramatic soliloquies", no dialogue, interspersed with the occasional descriptions of the waves breaking across the length of a day, which of course is a metaphor for life itself. Furthermore, whilst the other novels and books mentioned have focused on making us question social structures, The Waves makes us question selfhood. This is most powerfully envisaged through Bernard, who takes on the character of Byron during his youth to hide behind, only feels himself when recounting empty phrases to others, and at the novel's climax his sense of self abandons him and he tops himself
In fact all of the characters lead a thoroughly miserable existence; even Jinny, who only seems to care about fashion and seduction has the occasional wobble. Rhoda lives in a fantasy world, is terrified of human contact and lacks any sense of self; Louis is commercially successful, but locked in a constant mission for perfection; Susan retreats to a pastoral idyll with a Victorian housewife's mentality, occasionally glimpsing something more which she had failed to reach; Neville is horribly intense and only flourished in intimate one on one situations. Bernard comments over dinner (in his head mercifully) that they have all failed to be human beings, and you can't help but agree with him. But in the end, don't we all fail?
It's good for us to be made to question things on all sorts of levels. We shouldn't ignore oppressive regimes and outrageous poverty to sit in candlelight pondering the meaning of life, but equally if we're overly political we may lose track of deeper philosophical questions. Therefore both Huxley and Woolf are worth a read, and despite its occasionally terrible moments, Interstate 60 is also worth a shot.

Topical Ponderings: What Makes the Perfect Ghost Story?

Horror: one of the most repetitive genres out there.  But what is the winning formula? What makes the perfect ghost story?

Tonight (26/4/13), disappointing supernatural drama Lightfields, which had been about as pale and insubstantial as the ghost at the heart of the story, comes to a presumably disappointing end. Anyone with half a brain cell is way ahead of the lazy, meandering plot, which makes it all the more infuriating when it casts suspicion on people we know didn't kill Lucy Felwood. The parallel lives of the three different generations are too disparate, with a few of the same characters crossing over but no thematic links apart from the ghost of Lucy Felwood, who is irritating.

Lucy isn't a particularly good ghost. In Lightfield's 2011 precursor Marchlands, at least the little girl was inventive when she chose to pounce on you, at one point being in the washing machine. Lucy is just very good at counting, which isn't particularly terrifying. So if Lightfields fails, what makes a really chilling ghost story?

If asked to name the best haunted house film of recent years, many would say The Woman in Black. We are presented with good old fashioned scares involving a seemingly omnipresent spectre and an ensemble of dead children. And because somehow it was only a 12A, it's probably succeeded in condemning several children to nightmares involving ghosts attacking Harry Potter. Speaking of our protagonist, Daniel Radcliffe isn't very good, but mercifully all he's called upon to do is look scared. However, beneath the creepy music, it's fairly run of the mill. The thought of children committing suicide is repulsive, but I prefer something a little more chilling in more supernatural yarns.

Films like The Woman in Black are brilliant when you're in the cinema, and Insidious is another example, but they don't leave much of a lasting impression afterwards (other than the embarrassment of clutching one of my friends knees in sheer panic, but we wont go into that). Proper ghost stories send a shiver down your spine whenever you recall them.

The Awakening is a better film for me. While the scares are less frequent and sometimes less impactful, a shock twist at the end makes the film stick in your memory. And it's creepier than The Woman in Black or Insidious, as dead children are always worse and we all fear the spectres that may be lingering in our memory. Another shock ending is The Sixth Sense, but the rest of the film is fairly average so doesn't live up to the final revelation.

\But yet again, these films don't quite cut it, as the movie needs to be brilliant all the way through, it can't just have a good ending. And with all the dramatic music and sharp editing, its easy to become detached and not care about our hero's fate. We need to feel like we're stuck in the same situation as our protagonist, to fill our pulses rise in sync with theirs. And if that's going to happen, the film needs to have a lower budget.

Lets talk about Blair Witch Project. In the great scheme of things, it's done more bad than good, Cloverfield and the boring Paranormal Activity series. But although many disagree, I thought it was brilliant. The atmosphere was so electric that you could really feel our heroes isolation and desperation growing, and it was as if you were in the forest with them. Yes, the plot is almost non-existent, but it generally is in ghost stories. The ending, which many find insubstantial, I think makes the film. We never discover quite what caused the death of our intrepid film makers.
spawning an overwhelming number of found footage films, including the appalling

Another ambiguous ending concludes the equally experimental Silent House. Featuring Elizabeth Olsen, who was so brilliant in Martha Marcy May Marlene, the film is made to look like it was shot all in one take, moving in strict real time rather than the days that Blair Witch Project spans. Olsen is very good at being scared as she dashes through the darkened house, and we feel everything with her. The jaunty camera work means that sometimes we're not quite sure what's set her off, and robbing us of this knowledge is a master stroke. The movie sets itself up to be fairly low key, but it spirals into a surreal nightmare. In a strange nod to to The Evil Dead (you just can't escape that film), Olsen finds herself in a bathroom with a strange girl in a bath and blood pouring out of a cistern that's facing out of the wall for some reason. By the end, the trust we've invested in our fellow sufferers is shattered. Of the cast of four: three of them are murderers, one of them's a child abuser and one of them's a figment of the imagination.

These two films are fantastic, but can what we've learnt about disorientation and ambiguity be applied to a traditional ghost story? For anyone who's read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, the answer is yes. And the book is such a good ghost story because it's never really about ghosts, in fact it's questionable if there's any ghosts in it at all. It seems to be about the disintegration of the upper class, the ghost of country house dramas is still a reminder of a simpler life before the woes of the modern age. But it's also about madness, family ties and love. The whole book is fantastic, but with the ending it really hits the nail on the head. Because we're never sure who killed the final inhabitant of Hundreds Hall. The easy explanation is that it was the ghost of the little girl (and this is an improvement on the norm, we have a homicidal ghost), which is in keeping with all the oddities that have occurred thus far. But if we move away from the comfort of supernatural explanations, we're left with the bare facts that our protagonist, the kindly Dr Faraday, chucked his jilting lover down the stairs. And if you think about it, this does seem the more rational explanation. After all, there has to be a touch of evil about a man who takes advantage of a woman's fragile mental state to seduce her. And if there's no ghost, then the family was mad, or maybe our doctor killed the rest of them. The moral of this story, living people are infinitely more scary than dead ones.

So, in our discussion of Lightfields we've made many important discoveries. First of all, you have to be moderately interesting before you die. Lucy Felwood is about as insipid as they come. Secondly, it's not all about the shocks if you want long term impact, a creepy concept will serve you well. And finally, for a killer ghost story, you need a touch of uncertainty. It can't be clear cut, there must be some detail that haunts the viewer, like a ghost that just refuses to go away.

Topical Ponderings: The Death of the Real

Has cinema become terrified of that nasty thing we call the real world? What is the source of the current obsession with revamping fairytales? Simon Fearn investigates.

A few years ago, the winner of the prestigious Eurovision Song Contest (not really) was a Norwegian twelve year-old who grinned his way through a chorus of "I'm in love with a fairytale, even though it hurts". My inability to recall the singer's name is evidence enough of the song's success, but our obsession with fairytales has persisted. When I (not unreasonably) wanted to go and see Danny Boyle's Trance at Uttoxeter's Cineworld, I was confronted with unspeakable horror. Their four screens were filled with Oz: The Great and Powerful, The Croods, Jack the Giant Slayer and Hansel and Grettle: Witch Hunters. It seemed not to occur to them that people over the age of twelve might like to go to the cinema. But even more alarmingly: two of these films were fairytale-based action movies which are becoming something of a pandemic and one of them was a prequel to a children's book (which apparently has hidden depths concerning Great Depression related satire, but even so). Why are we so obsessed with bloody fairytales?

There are probably many explanations. Escapism is now in vogue in an era where the Germans think its acceptable to take 40% of someone's money out of their bank account. The latest Hobbit film was a telling example of this longing to hark back to some sort of pastoral netherworld without George Osborne condemning us to increasingly depressing budgets. Perhaps people are just running out of ideas. This would explain why every October we're treated to yet another Paranormal Activity film which is a carbon copy of the last one. Perhaps fresh tales can never have the same impact as the old ones, which is why shady Hollywood film makers wish to milk the cash cows of childhood fables.



Can the opening scene of 28 Days Later be described as iconic?

In a recent interview with that demon of our airwaves, Chris Evans (I am often forced to listen to Radio 2, and am shocked that Evans doesn't know when Easter is), Danny Boyle said that he tried to give his films an element of the mythological. Then Chris Evans went on to insult him by saying "there is a chance that no one will like your film". But aside from my desire to be the architect of Chris Evans's destruction, Boyle has a point. In 28 Days Later there's that iconic scene where our hero wakes up in a deserted London, that cannot fail to send shivers down your spine. That sequence has seeped into out cultural fabric, and was adapted by US zombie fest series The Walking Dead.

And if we're going to talk zombies, they've been attacked from every imaginable angle with varying degrees of success. We've come a long way from Romeo's iconic Night of the Living Dead, we now have the zomcom (Zombieland), zombie romance (Warm Bodies) and zombie psycho-drama (BBC3's fantastic In The Flesh). Is it just me, or did someone, someday have a good idea and everyone's just milking it for all its worth? Is it the same with fairytales?

Last year there were two films about Snow White (Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman). It's a story about nasty fruit (which has itself been ingrained in our psyche since Eve made the mistake of listening to a talking serpent), vain women and short people. Do we honestly need two films about it? I've already talked about out obsession with vampire films in a previous article, and the idea of modern vampires all stems from a book by Bram Stoker, whose tedious use of the epistolary form bores even the most patient reader.

If we include the modern vampire story as a fairytale, then our definitions includes practically everything that's had time to sink into our psyche. The practise of allusion in novels mean that old books never quite die, and great authors will be quoting Shakespeare till kingdom come. And perhaps that's why we have this reverence for classic literature, but yet we don't share this respect for more modern books. I'm not of the belief that fiction has got worse, so why are older books considered far superior to some of the most exciting, experimental works of the 20th century?

If pressed, I wager most of us know the basic plots to Hamlet, Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations. And they are iconic tales, beautifully crafted in such a way that every moment deserves the historic significance we give it. Unlike the fairytale adaptations that cinema is currently churning out, they were beautifully constructed with a view to telling us something about the human condition that fairytales can never quite achieve. So it seems peevish to say that they've sunk into our psyche simply because of age and constant allusion in younger texts. Indeed, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has become iconic, with big brother and room 101 sticking in our minds. But is this the way Orwell wrote his masterpiece, or simply because there have been TV shows called Big Brother and Room 101?

Taking this into consideration, it's difficult to say whether iconic tales are iconic because of their individual merit or because of the constant brutalisation they receive at the hands of profit hungry morons. The latter seems to be the case when more people have heard Kate Bush's song Wuthering Heights rather than read Bronte's novel, and as a result of this Heathcliff has become some kind of rugged, tempestuous romantic hero. The song fails to mention that he murders puppies or the horrific way he treats his wife to get at Cathy. And so these elements of Heathcliff's character fail to register with many of us. This also explains the appeal of fairytales. Most of them aren't very good, but we all know them from childhood, so this explains the curious desire to see them played out on the big screen.

Those who are a fan of postmodern philosophy (and I doubt there are many of you) may be aware of a theorist called Baudrillard, who famously said that Disneyland exists to make the rest of America seem real. He believed that we're so overwhelmed by simulations (yes cinema, that does include you) that much of our experience of the real world is constructed around representations of it (how does seeing countless on screen couples say "I love you" influence how we say the famous three words). Baudrillard also said that we are desperately looking for reality as we realise everything that we thought was real is so dependant upon simulation that it can be dismissed as fake. But on this point he seemed to be wrong. We seem to have given in, let ourselves be overcome by the death of the real. When we once searched for gritty realism in our films, or social satire on the latest political outlook, now we seem to be churning over our culture, trying to remodel old ideas. It as if we're trying to worm our way into the comfortable fabric of our cultural history, scared of our future and in denial of our present. Is this just a passing fad, or is this our future? If it is, then I can see my trips to the cinema becoming more and more infrequent.

Topical Ponderings: Where Now?

How do you follow a hit film, book, album or TV series? Same again or pastures new? Bigger and bolder or smaller and more intimate? Is there anything in the final masterpiece? Simon Fearn has none of the answers.

It's now barely 4 days until Danny Boyle's latest offering, Trance, is released in cinemas. The famously eclectic director, arguably one of the best British filmmakers of our time, has produced the best zombie movie so far (28 Days Later), a mainstream re-imaging of bollywood (Slumdog Millionaire) and is about to tackle the sort of psycho-drama that Christopher Nolan thought he had a monopoly on. Furthermore, his leading man, James McAvoy can hardly be accused of being type cast, playing a doomed lover (Atonement), a plucky but ultimately hopeless university student (Starter for Ten) and softly spoken superhero Professor Xavier (XMen: First Class, alongside the equally versatile Jeniffer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender). This year alone he's tackling the roles of Macbeth, a slightly dodgy cop (Welcome to the Punch), a very dodgy cop (Filth), a cold hearted criminal (Trance) and an inadequate husband in forthcoming double film experiment The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: His and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Hers. The pair seem to be able to do just about anything, and not only that, do everything spectacularly.



However, things are not looking so good for James Franco, one of Danny Boyle's ex-leading men in 127 Hours. Franco flops big style in Oz: The Great and Powerful. The supposedly enigmatic 'wizard' should be played as a failed, but ultimately good man or a hopelessly corrupt dictator beyond redemption. Franco manages to miss both interpretations, aiming at a vague mess of the two. More intriguing is Disney's choice of director for their pointless prequel: Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame. Back in 1981, Raimi was directing his leading man Bruce Campbell in a freezing cabin in the woods as Campbell tackled encroaching Deadites with his iconic chainsaw. True, now the film does seem ever-so-slightly dated, but at the time Raimi was pushing boundaries, managing to achieve the coveted title of Video Nasty. Now Raimi is directing Campbell again as "Winkie Gate Keeper" in his latest bland offering. What the hell is a "Winkie Gate Keeper"? The wooden acting and unnatural dialogue have  somehow carried over from The Evil Dead, but the run of the mill content reminds me of Tim Burton's abysmal Planet of the Apes remake, and just about every family film ever made. Hero finds himself in unfamiliar territory; hero meets love interest; hero does A Brave Thing; evil army amass to kill Hero and Accomplices; dramatic but ultimately pointless final battle; everything turns out alright in the end by some miraculous, but predictable, twist.

We can also blame Raimi for more family friendly fluff in the form of the Spiderman Trilogy, so it's not surprising that the thing he's most remembered for is his 80s gore fest. But can we blame him for his move to the mainstream? Would I still be criticising him if he continued in the line of low budget horror flicks? Hence the uneasy conflict between doing what you're good at and being eclectic enough to avoid being accused of being stuck in a rut. We can't all be Danny Boyle or James McAvoy.

Nowhere is it more problematic to find a formula and stick to it than in the music industry. Mumford and Sons were slated by their 2012 epic Babel, with Q Magazine  peevishly claiming that it was "just like the last one". But as the band claimed, it was evolution, not revolution. The foursome knew what sort of sound was there's and seemed to be constantly refining. True, Babel is the natural progression from Sigh No More, and none of the tracks are much of a departure for their winning folky formula, but it's a lot better than their debut. Surely that counts for something! The same is true of Florence & the Machine's Ceremonials. More epic pop anthems you say! What did you expect?

On the other hand, Paramore are almost unrecognisable on their latest single Now and sound like a somewhat annoyed version of Haim. Back in the days of Brand New Eyes, listeners would be slightly taken aback by Hailey William's singing "now-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow", and even now it's slightly annoying. Nevertheless, the band settle in to a comfortable Paramore-esque groove in the pre-chorus, reminding us that the teen-punk-pop angst isn't quite over yet (despite one of the tracks being called I'm Not Angry Anymore, yeah right!). The fact that they're making the bold (or lazy) decision to release a self-titled album seems to suggest that we're finally going to be treated to the true essence of Paramore. But then again, The Beatles's self-titled double album involved strange departures into the Wild West and the confounding Revolution 9.

When making a choice about how to pitch your next project in any of the arts, you need to make one key decision: bigger or smaller? Florence and Mumford both went bigger with superb results. Ellie Goulding laid on the synths in a big way in Halcyon, which while being infinitely more ambitious than the cutesy Lights, seemed to have both drama and subtlety. The cult BBC 3 series Being Human made the unwise (but possibly inevitable) choice of keeping going bigger, culminating in a hugely bizarre situation of the devil taking over the world and our supernatural heroes being stuck in some strange kind of dream world without even knowing about it. Tobey Whitehouse's constant pressure to raise the stakes ever higher meant the series had nowhere to go after its fifth run, and fizzled out just as he'd gone to the trouble of replacing all three of his leads. The truth is, although going bigger sometimes yields great results, its the obvious thing to do. A much braver decision is going smaller.

Take David Mitchell, postmodern visionary and general awkward genius. He followed the bonkers Cloud Atlas (which spanned hundreds of years and had a huge ensemble of disparate but interconnected characters) with the intimate Black Swan Green (a semi-autobiographical account of the day-to-day ordeals of a schoolboy stammerer living in the middle of nowhere, spanning just one year). True, when we think of Mitchell, we think Cloud Atlas, but Black Swan Green is perhaps more beautiful. Mitchell wields his characteristic way with words while maintaining the distinctive character of Jason, and make a single year in the life of a schoolboy look just as wondrous as centuries of human history. While I prefer Cloud Atlas, Jason Taylor is my favourite character from the two books.

With all this to think about, it's no surprise there's so many one-hit-wonders. Where was Richard Kelly meant to go after he stunned the world with Donnie Darko? If George Orwell had managed another book, how would he follow Nineteen Eighty-Four? It seems there's something in final masterpieces. If you have these big moments early in your career, then the rest of it is going to consist of you constantly weilding out the old behemoths while your latest, possibly more rewarding work, becomes a mere footnote. No wonder Radiohead got sick of Creep, with Tom Yorke wailing "this is our new song, just like the last one, a total waste of time" in My Iron Lung. The wait of history arguably turns the old visionaries like Sam Raimi into Hollywood's yes-men. Even Tim Burton suffers, not only was Planet of the Apes terrible, but so was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Alice in Wonderland, with Burton making the curious decision of trying to appeal to nine-year-olds. None of his recent works can live up to Edward Scissorhands or Big Fish, two films which seemed to capture the essence of Burton.

Danny Boyle seems not to have any of these worries, avoiding the woes of the disappointing follow up by making his films distant cousins rather than successors. But most mere mortals in the artistic world will always be pursued by their own back catalogue. The Raimis and Burtons of this world will hide in the big money and big audiences of Hollywood, the Paramores will stoically refuse to grow up and the Mumfords will develop at the pace of a snail playing a banjo. And so our artists heroically continue along the road to certain obscurity, but are capable of minor miracles along the way.

Ratings of films/books/albums/TV series mentioned:
Oz: The Great and Powerful- 3/10
Mumford and Sons: Sigh No More- 7/10
Mumford and Sons: Babel- 8/10
Paramore: Now (Single)- 6/10
Being Human: Series 5- 7/10
David Mitchell:Cloud Atlas- 9/10
David Mitchell: Black Swan Green- 8/10
Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton Remake)- 4/10
Big Fish- 8/10

Topical Ponderings: Are We Bored of Vampire Films?

The Frog brothers pull a silly pose

Last night I decided to finish The Lost Boys trilogy. The third film was possibly even more ridiculous than the previous two, but Corey Feldman, who had been faintly annoying as the older Edgar Frog in the second one, shone when he was placed in the foreground. The hedonistic, teenagery aspect of the previous Lost Boys film was pushed to the side in favour of comic vampire shenanigans. There was a nice little dig at Stephenie Meyer as well by including a deluded vampire romance writer. With a satisfying and humorous climax, the final instalment in The Lost Boys trilogy was neat and fun, although not necessarily good (certainly better than the lacklustre second film though).

This was all very well and good, but it got me thinking about the vast array of vampire films I have consumed over the past few years. They're everywhere, and practically everyone is trying to put a different spin on the bloodsuckers. But which works best? The contestants are: Dracula, Van Helsing, Fright Night, Dark Shadows and Daybreakers. The fight for the best vampire film is on!

Bizarre seems the most fitting adjective to describe Dracula (1992). The count alternates from being old with silly hair to young and dashing with a silly hat, seemingly randomly, and for some strange reason changes into a strange werewolf type creature occasionally. A lot of strange things happen for the sake of strangeness, but this seems to add to the film.

We actually end up rooting for the Count, as he seems a much better lover than Mina's dreadfully boring husband Jonathon Harker. The famous vampire is lovelorn, having become demonic after his one true love Elizabeta launched herself from a balcony. But his romantic prospects are looking up, as he discovers that the fiance of Harker, who he now has imprisoned in his playboy castle (well it seems that way) is actually Elizabeta reincarnated. Strangely, Dracula decides the best course of action is to turn Mina's best friend Lucy into a vampire first, which makes her various manly friends so pissed off that they decide to hunt Dracula down.

The acting talent on display is brilliant. Gary Oldman is Dracula, Wiona Ryder is Mina, Anthony Hopkins is a slightly deranged Van Helsing and Keanue Reeves is the frightfully boring Harker. Dracula is represented as the vampiric version of Heathcliff, incredibly romantic but equally dangerous. His ability to seduce women is his most terrifying power, which remains loyal to the book. So all in all, this is an arty take on vampires, and is possibly the definitive vampire film.

But while Dracula seemed perfectly content wreaking havoc across Whitby and other idyllic English locations, he always seemed more at home in Transylvania, which is marvellously recreated in the 2004 film Van Helsing. Hugh Jackman has replaced Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, the films titular action hero. He has a vast array of monsters to deal with, including werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, Mr. Hyde, harpies and Dracula himself. But this is, above all, a family film, Dracula with stabilisers on if you like. There are some fairly decent action sequences, but the stunts and the marvellous visuals take priority over any character development. Richard Roxburgh is Dracula on steroids. He has a castle, a cape and is bombastically evil. He is a comic book villain (the whole film is essentially a comic book like affair), not Gary Oldman's tortured soul. And Hugh Jackman just seems to good at killing vampire to be a vampire hunter. In the tradition of the original Van Helsing, Peter Vincent and Edgar Frog, vampire hunters are just dreadful at hunting vampires.

But lets not forget that Stephen Sommer's (director of Van Helsing) is the champion of family horror/action films. He was a major staple of my early cinematic experiences, Van Helsing used to be my favourite film at the age of around 10, closely followed by Sommer's other action romp The Mummy. While not a serious contender for the title of best vampire film, it does what it says on the tin, great visuals and family friendly action.

I suppose we need a brief mention of where vampire films went wrong: Twilight. Why is it so disastrous? Firstly, the vampires seem not to care about drinking people's blood. One of my favourite vampires is Mitchell from Being Human (a brilliant Aidan Turner), who tries his best to remain sober, but inevitably has the occasional bloody relapse which he then spends ages brooding over. He started of as a nice easy going chap, but by the event of his death he was fairly close to being evil. The anaemic Robert Pattison seems the sort of boy you'd invite round to dinner with your parents, not a tortured soul constantly doing battle with the urge to plunge his teeth into you throat. Secondly, it never seemed high on Dracula's agenda to have healthy, long term relationships. Although he yearned for Mina, he still didn't mind a brief murderous fling with her best friend beforehand. The film is tragically awful, and should be resigned to the scrapheap of cinema.

Moving on to 2011, and it was someones clever idea to remake an old horror flick: Fright Night. I've never seen the original, but I must admit that I quite enjoyed it. It tried is best to have some moments that were fairly scary. while maintaining a light, humorous tone. Anton Yelchin is non-descript as the typical teenager with the misfortune of having a vampire move in next door. But it's two supporting performances the make this film amusing. Colin Farrell is a marvellous vampire. While Richard Roxburgh came over as faintly camp and Gary Oldman marvellously out of his time, he plays a modern, fairly ordinary vampire who maintains the facade of being a friendly neighbour while draining kidnapped girls dry inside his house. David Tennant meanwhile plays celebrity vampire hunter Peter Vincent, a self-obsessed but ultimately useless figure forced to wear too tight leather trousers for a living. The melodrama is limited, which adds to the fun. Fright Night is nothing special, but still an enjoyable romp.

This year, Tim Burton decided to get a piece of the vampire action with Dark Shadows. Johnny Depp is Barnabus Collins, who becomes undead when Eva Green (a witch) takes revenge on his family for being jilted. In 1972, Barnabus is set free after 200 years imprisonment, and tries to make amends for the various villagers he's killed by helping out his oddball family. While Dracula actively tried to seduce women, Barnabus faces unwanted attention from all angles, Eva Green's still out to get him and Helena Bonham Carter's alcoholic professor fancies eternal youth. The fun emerges from Dark Shadows as it's so delightfully odd, and there's a lot going on, partially due to the fact that it was adapted from a soap. It proves that both Tim Burton and vampires can still be a lot of fun, and thrives from the marvellous performance of Johnny Depp.

Surely we've exhausted all the possible avenues to explore with our favourite bloodsuckers. It appears not. In Daybreakers, vampires get political. Although it's nowhere near as loyal to Stoker's vampires as the other films, it seems an excellent modern interpretation. In Stoker's day, our greatest fear was letting our passions control us and breaking strict moral and sexual codes. Nowadays, big corporations and the suppression of the proletariat (yes, vampires can be Marxist) is more relevant. Ethan Hawke is a nice vampire, uncomfortable with the evil corporation's harvesting of human blood. He needs to find a blood substitute as there aren't many humans left, and hungry vampires transform into demented bat-like creatures when going dry for too long. Represented here are our own struggle as we run out of resources and the fact that in certain societies, governments only worry about the lower orders when they start becoming a threat to their political power (or in this case, running rampage). Evil companies also sacrifice general decency and human lives for profit. The acting is nothing special and the horror is sparse, but this new dimension to the undead is refreshing and interesting.

So, in the end, I think ultimately Dracula  is artistically the best film, but for a bit of fun vampire action, you can't go wrong with Fright Night and Dark Shadows. Meanwhile, look to Daybreakers for an intelligent twist on a now increasingly tired aspect of horror.

And now, the ratings....
Lost Boys: The Thirst: 4/10
Dracula: 5/10
Van Helsing: 3/10
Twilight: 3/10
Fright Night: 5/10
Dark Shadows: 7/10
Daybreakers: 6/10