Horror Movies! Vampires And Found-Footage

Byzantium (2012)

Recently a lot of people have been feeling a bit vampired-out. It seems like we've seen practically every single possible interpretation of the vampire mythos imagineable. Still one of the most interesting recent takes on the vampire tale was "Let The Right One In" which managed to bring the vampire tale into the modern day in a very genuine way without losing the original sinister side of the vampire.

"Byzantium" follows a similar pattern of making the vampire myth seem realistic without forgetting the vampire roots. There's a great cast here with Saoirse Ronan ("Atonement", "Hanna"), Gemma Arteton ("Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters", "The Disappearance of Alice Creed") and Caleb Landry Jones ("X-Men: First Class", "Antiviral"). There's also an appearance from Daniel Mays ("Vera Drake", "Made In Dagenham").


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The Bay (2012)

This admittedly had pretty widespread poor reviews, but every now and then I'd hear something semi-positive about it and I became convinced that it must have something good about it. Apparently the science elements have been pretty thorough. However, the inescapable problem is that "The Bay" is supposed to be a found-footage horror movie and it is so horrendously booooring. It is boring as hell!

Found footage movies often have various tricks up their sleeve to make up for a lack of musical score and dramatic music. They have ways of building up mood and tension. "The Bay", however, just feels like one long series of scenes gradually revealing what is causing the catastrophe at the bay. But there's very little to actually get me interested in what is happening.


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V/H/S/2 (2013)

I liked the first V/H/S. Sure the middle sections connecting the anthology of short films were dire, but the individual short films themselves were mostly pretty good. There was more to like than not to like and I counted that as a win.

Little did I know that this sequel would absolutely wipe the floor with it. Sure, the early reviews and the trailer both gave me reason to hope, but I always took such claims with a pinch of salt, but I must admit that V/H/S/2 is superior to the original film in pretty much every single possible respect.


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