A Bloody Awful Horror Romance

(090524) I usually research films a bit before I see them. However, when I saw the new Roku film, The Vampire Next Door I went in totally cold. I also had never heard of the cast or anyone who worked on the film. But considering the quality of the film, I would not be surprised if  I never came across them again.

The Vampire Next Door is not exactly a horror film but it has some horror elements. It’s more of a supernatural or paranormal romance but it has even less violence and gore than the Twilight films. Another example of  the fairly new paranormal romance is the zombie romance film, Warm Thoughts and perhaps the True Blood show,

The recent Maxxxine tried to be the next Body Double, and Longlegs attempted to be the new The Silence of the Lambs, but the Vampire Next Door has much lower aspirations. It tries to be a new Once Bitten which is not a worthy pursuit. Like that film, it ends up being a low-brow vampire variation on a teen male initiation story.

It has the basic plot pattern of Risky Business, The Babysitter (during the first half), and even more so The Girl Next Door which it is probably named after. In all these films a nerdy adolescent male is disrespected or bullied. In each case, the wimpy kid meets an older and more experienced alpha female who is way out of his league and helps him become a man. Only the professions of the women have changed. In Risky Business she is a prostitute, in The Babysitter she is a nanny, and in The Girl Next Door she is a vampire. 

Cameron (Alex Matthews) is a clumsy, bullied high school student who never had a girlfriend. But he does get along very well with his longtime platonic female friend, Diane and he has had a crush on her for a long time. Her brother bullies Cameron and when he catches Cameron ogling her, he humiliates Cameron by throwing his camera in the water.

Things get complicated when Cameron gets a mysterious new neighbor, Victoria (played by Welsh actress, Jessica Fergusen)  She seems to invite him to peep on her, much like Melanie Griffith’s character in Body Double or Sandrine Bonnaire’s character in the classic Monsieur Hire, by leaving her window open as she undresses. But she has seemingly supernatural speed and confronts him peeping at her and she tells him she will complain to his parents unless he will work from her making him into the equivalent of a familiar like  the main character in Renfield (although she doesn't bite him)

She uses him to get revenge. He has to drive her to certain spots so that she can kill the descendants of people who destroyed her lover hundreds of years ago. Initially he does not know what she is doing, then he oversees her putting the bite on someone and figures out she is a vampire. She’s using him although she seems to have a bit more of a moral compass than some other screen bloodsuckers.

Things get even more complicated because the female co-worker at the restaurant Cameron works at also has a crush on him and asks him to meet her at a concert. She gets down when she sees that he is spending all his time with Victoria and Diane and has no energy or time for her. He is in a love triangle (or maybe a love quadrangle) but it’s clear pretty early who he will end up with.

The acting in The Vampire Next Door is competent but never especially impressive. Alex Matthews manages to give Cameron a few personal ticks and makes him less generic than he could have been. Jessica Ferguson is ok playing a femme fatale who is not as bad as she seems and she manages to convince you that she is repressing emotions and that there is more going on in her head than we thought. Bella Chadwick is fine as the bright, cheery, and exuberant girl next door Diane. But his script gives them almost nothing to work with.

The Vampire Next Door was made by Sean King, who is not the most promising filmmaker. Unless he dramatically improves, he may not have the talent to graduate to big-budget on-screen films. This is not the worst thing I have seen this year, but there is not one aspect of the film that is especially memorable or exceptional.  With all of the thousands of choices on streaming and cable, there is simply no reason to watch this. There are dozens of better choices on nearly every streaming station.