Okay kids, quiz time. What is one of the most overdone sub-genres in the world of horror? We’re thinking about the United States here, so ghosts only applies if it was Asia that was in question. If you answered vampires, you are 100% correct. With very little money at all, just about anyone can create a vampire film. All you need is a pair of caps from your local Hot Topic to give you that vampire look, some fake blood that can be made or purchased from almost any store that carries theatrical supplies, and that’s not always necessary, and that’s really about it. A few people want to get more creative, but usually, that’s not the case at all.

I thought, or I guess rather, I hoped, that the vampire movie was something that had been left behind for a while especially since companies like Brain Damage Films had gotten into the habit of releasing a new vampire film or six on what seemed like a monthly basis. Apparently however, the creatures of the night haven’t seen their last movie for a while thanks to The Insatiable. The attempt here is to combine horror and comedy, something that is rarely successful save for a few extreme cases. Harry Ballo (Sean Patrick Flanery) is just a typical salesman who really lives something of a monotonous life. That all changes when he witnesses a vampire murder a homeless man in the streets and that’s just the beginning. After doing some inquiry on the Internet he learns that the one person who seems to actually believe his tales of vampires, Strickland (Michael Biehn) lives in the same apartment building. Strickland begins training him in the ways of hunting vampires, but when Harry finally learns where his prey is, he can’t bring himself to kill the beautiful vampires Tatiana (Charlotte Ayanna) and instead imprisons her in the basement where he hopes that she wont’ do anymore harm and despite Strickland’s orders, it seems more and more that Harry is falling under her spell.

When it comes to vampire movies, some want to go for a more gothic approach, something that has truly been overdone in recent years. Others want to go for a gorier and graphic approach, but The Insatiable does neither of these. Actually, it does very little in terms of actually bringing anything truly relevant and memorable to an already overdone mythology. The allure and fascination with vampires is something that’s more akin to a high school goth girls fantasy than it is to anything really relevant with cinema. With far too many takes on the classic tale of Dracula and very few memorable movies brought to the genre, it’s a wonder that anyone even continues to think that making a vampire movie is even a feasible idea. Horror may be a lucrative venture, but in today’s marketplace, too many people are trying to get a piece of the pie and this has resulted in plenty of shoddy efforts being released.

Harry is meant to represent more or less every average person. He’s a creature of habit, he has a job that would probably bore most to tears, so encountering something like a vampire is something to change what is an already mundane life. That’s fine, though we’ve seen that time and time again, so it’s not anything that is very unusual. I really feel that a movie like Shaun of the Dead has once again brought that idea into the forefront, especially when it comes to horror. There are scenes where we follow him through what is a routine, but that begins to change, especially when he turns “vampire hunter,” or at least what passes as one. At this point, we find him taking the approach that most probably would in terms of trying to pick up the right gear and again, this ends up being shades of Shaun of the Dead to some extent, though not nearly as humorous.

This whole idea really continues when he finally locates Tatiana, and for someone who is single and really leads a rather boring life, having a beauty like this ends up being something that is almost too good to pass up, though there is that small problem of her being a vampire. Strickland is the obsessive hunter who has been tracking vampires for quite some time and equates them to being more along the lines of a serial killer. He’s more or less a carbon copy of just about every vampire hunter that has ever come along and is filled with paranoia and his own high tech ready room, but it’s nothing that is too outlandish or over-the-top. Then the film turns to Harry and Tatiana starting to learn more about each other so that familiar idea of the vampire love story is introduced though with a reversal of roles.

The Insatiable isn’t a badly written movie. It’s filed rather well and it has some good actors to support it, but the real problem is that it’s not a vampire film that is memorable. It just sort of exists and that’s really about it. It begins to lose any possible charm very early on and the comedy aspect really isn’t represented very well throughout most of the movie. There are times when it feels that the movie isn’t quite sure what it truly wants to be. Is it a horror movie, is it a comedy, is it a love story; the idea of going too many different directions just doesn’t make the film gel well and even though it’s not a jumbled nightmare, it’s almost too indecisive for it’s own good most of the time.

The only thing that you will find included with the DVD that relates to the movie itself is a look at the theatrical trailer, but even that isn’t very impressive. I’m a bit surprised to not find a behind the scenes included with the director or writer talking about all of the different vampire movies that have been made and then boldly proclaiming how they wanted to do something different and bring a fresh, new idea to the table. That’s what everyone claims over and over, and very rarely does this actually become the reality. Out of the hundreds of movies that are released each year, only a few manage to live up to their claims and few still will be fondly remembered by fans and critics years to come.

The Insatiable really doesn’t do anything interesting and a great deal of the time, it doesn’t do much of anything at all. It’s just another in a long list of vampire movies, though definitely not as atrocious as some and it is absent of that shoddy look of being shot with a video camera purchased at a bargain price from Best Buy. The Insatiable really feels more like a movie that is proving that if you’ve seen on vampire movie, you’ve seen them all, and to find something new and interesting in the world of the vampire is goes back to Asian cinema and their films about ghosts. It’s all been done before, it’s been done better, but it’s now becoming harder and harder to find something that makes you take notice. This is one of many vampire movies that does very little in the way of true bloodletting and instead leaves you with the same craving that a vampire might have, only this time it’s just for a movie that you can really sink your teeth into.

-mike-