Your Daily Dracula – Henry Rollins as Jack, He Never Died (2015)

Your Daily Dracula – Henry Rollins as Jack, He Never Died (2015)

There are a lot of similarities between writer-director Jason Krawczyk’s He Never Died and Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, which came out two years later (but is based on a novel published in 2013).  However, the underlying premise of HND slots the two films in very different genres.

Jack (Henry Rollins), who has scars on his back which suggest the wings seen in publicity images weren’t metaphorical, is a seemingly middle-aged recluse who lives quietly in his drab city apartment, always eats at the same diner — where he has the nearest thing he can stand to human contact with regular waitress Cara (Kate Greenhouse) – and fills in some hours as apparently the youngest regular at senior citizens’ bingo.  He has a history of violence – and it turns out he’s quit a position as bouncer/enforcer with a local crime family after the death of the then-reigning boss, and isn’t in with the successor son Alex (Steven Ogg).  One day, teenage Andrea (Jordan Todosey) shows up, claiming to be the daughter he didn’t know he had – from a liaison some years before – and disappointed by his lack of instant enthusiasm for fatherhood.  However, as is the way with retired hard guys, the old life reaches out to complicate things and even his tentative attachments get him hooked into a feud which requires him to go the John Wick break-out-the-weapons-cache and get-back-into-multiple-fights business.  It would be a familiar contemporary noir scenario, only there are those wing-scars … and Jack’s drawing strength and healing ability from consuming human flesh or licking blood off bathroom floors.

Krawczyk’s cleverest move is casting Rollins – known as a wildman performer – as a guy who doesn’t say much and keeps to himself.  We know there’s a monster inside … but Rollins gives an extraordinarily controlled, forceful performance, convincing in bursts of violence but almost sweet in his just-wants-to-be-left-alone crotchetiness.  As to what or who Jack really is, there are contradictory possibilities.  He admits that he’s in the Bible, but claims to be Cain rather than a fallen angel.  When asked if he’s a vampire says that he’s the only vampire, the one all the myths are inspired by, but he also says that he impaled a lot of peasants in Wallachia so he seems to have been Vlad the Impaler at some point.  A highlight of the film comes when the mostly non-verbal Jack is asked what jobs he’s had and haltingly coughs up a million-year CV monologue with the repeated qualifier ‘for a while’ after owning up to being in the military, in prison, a potter, etc.

It kind of works that a character who fills such a space in human mythology is encountered here as a retiree who just wants to stick to his few blocks stamping ground, but it’s a bit limiting that the actual plot is just about the consequences of his actions in the last few years.  Krawczyk and Rollins hoped to continue the story, but sadly that didn’t happen.  Greenhouse and Todosey are excellent.