Movies
Brotherhood of Blood (V)
“With choppy action scenes, stilted gore, and poor direction all around, BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD doesn’t have much to recommend it. It’s cool that Foree and Haig got together again, but why? Because of the off-screen talent involved? Give me a fucking break. This is one of the worst movies I’ve seen so far this year.”
The DVD cover of BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD trumpets the cinematic reunion of horror legends Ken Foree and Sid Haig like some sort of Z-horror jerk-off preview for RIGHTEOUS KILL. Dude, it’s Foree and Haig, not Coombs and Crampton, but hey, they were both serving time in that shitty-ass DEVIL’S REJECTS, and
THAT was technically a horror movie, so it’s definitely worth getting them together for a stillborn direct-to-DVD vampire film, right?
BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD is another recent release under the Ghost House Underground label, but it’s obviously one of the lesser films in the collection. The plot is horribly, unnecessarily convoluted, with the narrative moving back and forth in time with practically every scene change: from Brazon, Romania (3 weeks ago), to San Pedro, California (today), to Los Angeles, California (yesterday), back to San Pedro (last night), and then back to L.A. (today), and on and on, until you feel like you’re mired in a rift in the space/time continuum that allows only the repetitive performances of bad actors trying to enunciate through plaster fangs.
Here’s the plot: Tom’s brother got scraped by a dead vampire’s tooth while exploring in Romania and everybody is trying to find him before he turns vamp, including a pack of obviously inept vampire hunters (led by Leno-jawed huntress Victoria Pratt) and a bunch of vampires with vaguely European accents. Tension is minimal, as much of the film is shot on interior sets that would look extremely cheap if they weren’t perpetually drenched in steam from off-camera smoke-machines. The vampire hunters capture and torture vampire Ken Foree—wearing a puffy Seinfeld-style pirate shirt and full-on buccaneer get-up—in order to obtain information, and their garbled interrogation takes up the majority of the film’s running time. It turns out that all the vampires are scared because Satan, himself, is rumored to be riding in on his sleigh to clean some vampire house. All of the vampires refer to Satan as “Vlad Kosay”, and they invoke his name so many times (as in, “I am so afraid of Vlad Kosay!”) it becomes pretty obvious that they’re ripping off THE USUAL SUSPECTS within the first 30 minutes.
With choppy action scenes, stilted gore, and poor direction all around, BROTHERHOOD OF BLOOD doesn’t have much to recommend it. It’s cool that Foree and Haig got together again, but why? Because of the off-screen talent involved? Give me a fucking break. This is one of the worst movies I’ve seen so far this year.
Movies
’28 Years Later’ – Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson Join Long Awaited Sequel
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (Annihilation, Men), the director and writer behind 2002’s hit horror film 28 Days Later, are reteaming for the long-awaited sequel, 28 Years Later. THR reports that the sequel has cast Jodie Comer (Alone in the Dark, “Killing Eve”), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), and Ralph Fiennes (The Menu).
The plan is for Garland to write 28 Years Later and Boyle to direct, with Garland also planning on writing at least one more sequel to the franchise – director Nia DaCosta is currently in talks to helm the second installment.
No word on plot details as of this time, or who Comer, Taylor-Johnson, and Fiennes may play.
28 Days Later received a follow up in 2007 with 28 Weeks Later, which was executive produced by Boyle and Garland but directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Now, the pair hope to launch a new trilogy with 28 Years Later. The plan is for Garland to write all three entries, with Boyle helming the first installment.
Boyle and Garland will also produce alongside original producer Andrew Macdonald and Peter Rice, the former head of Fox Searchlight Pictures, the division of one-time studio Twentieth Century Fox that originally backed the British-made movie and its sequel.
The original film starred Cillian Murphy “as a man who wakes up from a coma after a bicycle accident to find England now a desolate, post-apocalyptic collapse, thanks to a virus that turned its victims into raging killers. The man then navigates the landscape, meeting a survivor played by Naomie Harris and a maniacal army major, played by Christopher Eccleston.”
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) is on board as executive producer, though the actor isn’t set to appear in the film…yet.
Talks of a third installment in the franchise have been coming and going for the last several years now – at one point, it was going to be titled 28 Months Later – but it looks like this one is finally getting off the ground here in 2024 thanks to this casting news. Stay tuned for more updates soon!
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