we can like to bite you in the neck
Oh, lord. South Africa apparently feels the need to leap on the broody, glittery Twilight bandwagon and produce vampire movies of its own, presumably on the principle that if District 9 can make a roaring success out of South Africanising genre films, so can anyone. And thus we rejoice in the possession of Eternity, which I know about because a marketing email popped up in my campus inbox this morning. (And what's with that? are they spamming local universities, or was it a pin-pointedly accurate hit on someone who teaches vampire movies to SA students? if the latter, I darkly suspect that someone I taught is on the production team.)
Click to viewUm. I am actually torn between "this doesn't look terrible" on sheer production values, and "this looks terrible" in terms of pretty much everything else. From the limited synopsis/trailer info this isn't really Twilight, it's more the sensibility of Blade or Underworld or even Angel, although this last may be only because they seem to be adhering to the "lame and his hair sticks up" trope rather more fannishly than is strictly necessary. (See poster). But any of the above simply means that, unlike District 9 and pretty much as usual, SA is coming to the blockbuster clichés a decade late and a dollar short. This is done. This is done done done to a crispy done turn in a hot oven for far too long. It's dried out and unappetising. Urban setting, check. Broody vampires with guns, check. Looking for love, even1. Goth babes, check. Vampire power struggles, check. We can walk in sunlight, check. If it wants to be the vampire District 9, it's missed the whole, central, amazing point of the film, which was that it didn't just adopt the tropes, it adapted genre tropes to the SA setting, illuminating and refreshing both setting and tropes thereby.
I may be maligning this movie horribly on insufficient information, but neither synopsis nor trailer seem to suggest any attempt whatsoever to make this a South African vampire movie rather than a vampire movie simply set in Joburg. Vampires are about power; power in South Africa is inextricably about race. Almost all the vampires seem to be white. What's with that? is the film doing that simply because the stereotype says vampires are pale, or are they actually going to examine their assumptions there? are vampires the ultimate colonial power? what about African legends of supernatural monsters with affinity for blood or night? where's the impundulu? the asanbosam? is this building up into a postcolonial rant? aargh, it is. My department has infected me.
I am disappointed in the preliminary way in which this film presents itself. I have low expectations of originality or interest. I may watch it when it comes out, but I'll be seriously surprised if there's any substance here.
1 I recently came to a sudden awareness about vampires and their love-lives (while watching, naturally, The Vampire Diaries). It's perfectly simple, really. Being bitten by a vampire clearly arrests your emotional development completely at the point at which you were chomped. The world is full of 300-year-old vampire adolescents because they were all 17 when they were bitten, and they haven't advanced any. Clearly the teen hormones are still seething around their systems and neutralising the effects of several centuries of actual experience, leading to tumultuous world-ending love affairs, abysmal communication skills and a tendency to emo brooding. It explains everything.