In recent years when someone says the word ‘vampire’ it conjures thoughts of over waxed hair, sparkly skin and soppy teenage romance. Whilst the vampire sub-genre has always contained a strong sexual element there have been a few films that have broken this mould and maximised the monstrousness of the blood sucking creatures. David Slade’s 2007 film 30 Days of Night was one such movie that infused gruesome horror with a small town invasion narrative, usually saved for sci-fi films such as The Faculty and Invasion of the body Snatchers. Jim Mickle, however, has attempted to merge vampire-horror with the ever prolific and popular post-apocalyptic genre in his 2nd feature film, Stake Land.
Stake Land follows the story of an orphaned boy, Martin (Connor Paolo), and his vamp killing sensei, Mister (Nick Damici), as they embark through an American wasteland on a mission to New Eden, a country formerly known as Canada. Packed with religious rhetoric and critique of Christian fundamentalism, Stake Land strives to make a point that seems to get lost between the carnage and the rubble of its broken American landscape. Like other post-apocalyptic films such as The Road, the cause of society’s destruction is merely just a catalyst to express the limits of humanity and voice primal fears of the evil that men do. Stake Land’s zealot Christians, known rather unoriginally as The Brotherhood, become the face of true evil when juxtaposed with the zombie-like vampires, who can be forgiven for acting upon their unnatural instincts. The Brotherhood plays devil’s advocate with the vampires and welcomes their existence as a form of racial purification; however their extremism is contrasted with the humanity and sympathy of a nun known as Sister (Kelly McGillis) and the subtle themes of hope that Martin finds in Christian artefacts throughout his journey. Stake Land then takes the political middle ground in its religious rhetoric which seems too careful not to alienate an audience in its own critique of Christianity.
What Stake Land offers is a stylish and polished genre piece that successfully meshes themes and conventions of its predecessors into an entertaining 90 minutes of cinema. It’s recognisable and, at times, predictable story is handled well by Mickle’s subtle direction of the two leads. In a script filled with action scenes and the insertion of wayward hitchhikers, who mostly act as filler and cannon-fodder to a story sparse of any real plot, the main characters don’t quite flesh out into the dimensionality we’d hope for, which keeps Damici’s Mister both enigmatic and flat in his lack of back-story and motivation. The performances from Damici and Paolo keep the characters engaging and are at their strongest when communicating away from the dialogue with fleeting glances that add a sense of depth that the script doesn't allow. The true character of Stake Land, however, is the America that has survived the fervent destruction of vampires and mad men. With the aid of Ryan Samul’s cinematography, Mickle creates a landscape of chaos and death that is interwoven with a hope and humanity missing from other post-apocalyptic tales, such as The Road and The Book of Eli. As the characters travel through wastelands and communities they encounter different characters and situations that conjure notions of an America-that-was, adding a sense of realism to the darkness of Stake Land’s fantasy.
Stake Land is, by any means, nothing original but gives fans of the tarnished vampire genre something to get their teeth into in light of the recent Twilight and Vampire Diaries atrocities. The film gives hope that the genre may survive this cycle, albeit, as a reactionary mode that has somewhat lost sight of what vampires once represented and expressed in decades past. Stake Land does lose its way at times as it meanders through middle-American towns and each vampire battle acts as a point of departure from a scarce plot that, however, still manages to entertain and engage under the stylish direction of Mickle who offers a promising glint of good things to come.