Two young women, seemingly fairly normal, are vampires living in New York City, trying to find love and a point to this eternal life.
Written and directed by Amy Heckerling, Vamps is a bit like a grown-up-ish vampire Clueless crossed with Sex and the City and Gilmore Girls, it’s incredibly girly, filled with references to pop culture and situational involvement of the characters. The style is definitely not for everyone, but it’s Amy Heckerling’s style and it’s in full display here. Her work here is fun, funny, and charming. The characters are fairly interesting and the way they are brought to the screen shows that the film is not afraid of a few silly moments to alleviate the horror of the vampire world, or perhaps the horror elements of the vampire world are used to alleviate the girly comedy? In either case, it works and the film is a fun exercise in a new situation for vamps. There is a bunch of fun in here, some nonsense, some witty lines, some lines that are very much 2012, but overall, it’s entertaining and that is all a film needs to be sometimes. The writing is solid, the characters are interesting (in most cases), the leads carry the film into being a fun romp into the camp-vamp side of NYC.
The cast is amazing! Like seriously fab. The leads are played by Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter who have a good, fun chemistry together. They play their parts a touch airhead, but it works here and it gives the viewer a friendship to relate to at the center of everything. In a part that was clearly written for her, or became so, is Sigourney Weaver as their seeder, the vampire who made them. She is just full on fabulous and evil, no shame, all guts and glory. Her performance is a highlight of the film here. The rest of the cast is full of faces horror fans love and other familiar faces. Somewhere between Malcolm McDowell as Vlad Tepish and Wallace Shawn as Dr. Van Helsing, this film has someone for everyone. The whole cast seems to be having a blast which comes through and becomes contagious for the viewer. That sequence with McDowell impaling apples? A bit ridiculous, but he nails it.
The cinematography by Tim Suhrstedt along with the décor, costumes, and set-ups give the film a bubbly atmosphere for most of it, even though it takes place mostly at night. The colors are allowed to shine, the characters are never too hidden or badly lit. This is a film that puts its vamps right in your face, in a friendly manner. However, with this being said, the visual effects have not aged well, not at all. Actually, some of these effects, like when Krysten Ritter’s Stacy climbs down the wall of her boyfriend’s place, were not on par even in 2012. These look more early 2000, late 1990s. Think something out of Dracula 2000 instead of a 2012 vampire romcom.
Overall, Vamps is a very, very Amy Heckerling film, her influence is felt all over the place here as it should. This a film from the mind behind Look Who’s Talking, Clueless, Loser, and a bundle of colorful, peppy tv series. Her style is quite specific and very much felt here. Her work here is fun and while it is a vampire film, there is no fear here, this is not a scary horror film, it’s more of a romcom that happens to star vampires with a few kills here and there, none of them particularly traumatic. The main takeaway here is that for fans of her style, fans of Alicia Silverstone and Krysten Ritter, this is a fun watch and sometimes, fun is all you need.
