Vampiress Review: Sinners (2025)

The Gist: When twin brothers from Chicago (Micheal B. Jordan) move to the Jim Crow era south and start a juke joint, the music grabs the attention of a vampire preacher looking to make the patrons part of his congregation. 

Female Vampire Factor: (SPOILER WARNING) There are a lot in the film as by the films end nearly everyone who attended the juke joint gets turned but the one who gets the most screen time is Mary (Hailee Steinfeld)

Mary is the product of a mixed-race father and a white mother who was raised around the black community to the point that she is considered one of them.  She had a relationship with one of the twins (Micheal B. Jordan) who left her high and dry after sleeping with her by leaving before she woke up but we eventually learn that despite him trying to make it look like he didn't care he did it to protect her from people finding out she was with a black man and the danger it could cause her.  

When the vampire paster and his minions arrive asking to come in and party with the black towns people she volunteers to go out and interact with them to see if they are legit or if they had ulterior motives.  This results in her being bitten off camera which starts the horror portion of the film.   Her, already having the trust of the community would then be let back into the club where she would seduce and then bite one of the twins killing and turning him. 

Final Opinion: To say the story of this film is deep is a major understatement and it has enough plot for three different movies which explains the nearly two and a half hour run time.  The first hour and fifteen minutes covers the lives of the twins and their younger cousin who is the son of a preacher but who wants to be a blues musician which his father disagrees with.  This is mostly them planning the business which could have been condensed honestly.  Then the next 45 minutes to an hour introduces the vampires with the final 20 minutes being an action drama about black gangsters taking on the Klan which wraps up everything that was set up before the vampire part.

Similar to From Dusk Till Dawn the vampire portion is the most memorable part of the movie but also the shortest part.  In fact, the first thought that came to my mind is the film does borrow a lot from that movie with a strip club being replaced by a juke joint. 

It does border on being a musical with the amount of performing that goes on in the film as even the vampires get a turn singing and playing instruments.   

The most interesting thing in my opinion is that the vampires aren't necessarily villains.  I mean they are definitely villains but in the films hierarchy of monsters the vampires are nowhere near as bad as the Klansman with the head vampire somewhat having a Jim Jones mindset in that he is not killing people in his opinion and constantly tells those that he wants to turn that as vampires there is no racism and everyone is equal so he is liberating them and that's exactly how it comes across once they do turn as even the Klansman that he turns lose the hateful mindset once they're vampires since I guess all blood tastes the same regardless of race.

As a film on its own it's definitely 4.5 stars (only thing keeping it from a 5 is just how needlessly long it is).  As far as a Vampire Beauty Rating though 3 out of 5.  The limited time Mary gets post turn is good and some of the other main female characters get a few seconds of screen time with fangs but overall, they are an afterthought in the film that mainly exists in the background as random faces in a fight scene otherwise. 

Vampiress Review: Abigail

The Gist:  A group of criminals are tasked with kidnapping a 12 year old ballet dancer not realizing that not only is she the daughter of a powerful mob boss but she is also an unstoppable vampire. 

Clarification: I would best describe this film as if Home Alone was a horror movie. I mean it's literally about a little girl who is left at home alone who must deal with a group of criminals trying to get her and using underhanded tricks and tactics to protect herself.  She's basically girl MaCauley Culken with fangs. 

Female Vampire Factor:  Of course we have the title character Abigail played by Allisha Weir.

She is basically what happens if Claudia from Interview with a Vampire made it to modern times and became a mafia assassin. The anti-hero of the film, we find out that she's a woman eternally stuck in the body of a twelve-year-old who is an assassin for her fathers criminal organization specializing in getting rid of those who wrong him.  The criminals who kidnap her then find out the hard way that the kidnapping was just an elaborate plan to get them trapped in the house with her so that she could kill them.    

Once she reveals herself she spends a majority of the movie being very sarcastic and sadistic, working in a lot of ballet dancing in with her pursuit of her victims showing that she's toying with them more than anything. 

At one point she does bite and turn of her kidnappers in the computer hacker "Sammie" played by Kathryn Newton.

Sammy gets bit while the crew were trying to subdue Abigail.  At first it seems that she will be fine but we then find out that in the vampire mythos of this film anyone bitten by a vampire can be controlled by that vampire to the point that the person becomes an extension of them which is what happens to Sammy. Abigail eventually takes over her body and uses her to attack her fellow kidnappers. 

Problem is, even though she herself is not a vampire but the puppet of the vampire she still has the same weaknesses.  Because of this we also learn that sunlight unlike in other movies where it's a agonizing painful burn is an insta kill. 

Final Thought:  I give this one a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5 as clearly you aren't getting much out of a movie about a killer 12 year old but from a purely entertainment standpoint it's a 5.   Like I said above, if you like the movie Home Alone and you like horror films it's a perfect combination of the two genre's and it's not bogged down with a lot of backstory.  The plot is exactly what's happening from beginning to end and anything you learn about the characters is learned while the events are happening and not through flashbacks that kill the mood of the film.  I definitely recommend it. 

 

Vampiress TV Review: Demons

 Season 1, Episode 4 "Suckers"

Demons is a series about a group of monster hunters.  In the group is a guy named Luke who is a relative of the original Abraham Van Helsing and Mina Harker.  Initially it is believed that she is a relative of the Mina Harker of Dracula lore but in this episode it's finally revealed to all tha she is one in the same. 

In this episode a vampire named Quincy comes to town and begins feeding on humans and the hunters create a plan to kill him but main hunter Galvin worries that Mina will stop them as she has done in the past.  Throughout the episode the viewer is led to believe that the vampire Quincy is also the same from the Dracula book until it's eventually revealed that he is in fact the not that Quincy but the son of Mina and Jonathon Harker that Mina turned to prevent him from dying of an illness. 

He unlike her does not hold back his urges and she distances herself from him but seems to always come back.  Eventually Mina realizes what she must do but once she has the chance she still can't bring herself to kill her own son. 

Eventually Quincy does get killed via being shot with a vampire cure by Luke Van Helsing resulting in him rapidly aging and dying of old age in Minas arms.