Your Daily Dracula – Leeanne Johnson as ‘Elizabeth Dracula’, Dracula The Count’s Kin (2024)
A low-wattage, Indiana-made indie vampire movie – shot mostly in close-ups of people either talking or looking earnest, with remarkably little action. Considering that the antagonist is Dracula’s hitherto-unmentioned sister Elizabeth and that her m.o. is luring sad sack mama’s boys to her over a dating app, it’s also remarkably chaste – though red-eyed Leanne Johnson wears tight leathers and there is a square-up sequence involving a burlesque dancer.
Monika (Daisy Paroczy Hickey), our heroine, has a lot of backstory – abandoned at a fire station as a child (she’s done a DNA search and found out she’s mostly Dutch-Romanian), she has an older adopted sister (Paisley Blackburn) who wants to make up for being nasty to her as a kid, a best friend (Holly Anspaugh) who she helps out by sleuthing out that online suitors are married, a degree in criminology she hasn’t used because she’s spent ten years caring for an ill aunt, and a new job as assistant to PI Walter (James Tackett). Her first case involves mama’s boy Simon (Jamie Nolan) – who went on a date with ‘Anne Marie’ at eight and was reported missing by his mama at ten – latest victim of the six-hundred-year-old seductress. Also involved peripherally is a sensationalist internet reporter (Chloe Lutz) eager to ride a vampire story to national fame and a group of paranormal enthusiasts which happens to include Van the Man (Jason Smither) who can gift Monika with a box of vampire-killing kit (inclduing ridiculous garlic necklace). At the site of Simon’s disappearance, Monika uses a blacklight to find a message written in blood which mentions her by name … but director Eric Pascarelli, who co-wrote with Mage Lanz, doesn’t quite tie the knots of the plot.
Yes, Monika is the last of the Van Helsings and Elizabeth is either out to avenge or resurrect Dracula – present as some ashes and a skull – but hints that the whole thing is a cunning scheme to lure the victim are flat-out contradicted by the shrugging, non-urgent storytelling (only that overconcerned mother is even remotely insistent on getting on with it) and make little sense. Elizabeth could just have walked up to Monika and bitten her without any of this fuss. Performances aren’t terrible in the way many micro-budget movies are stuck with, but aside from Johnson’s occasional fang-flashes aren’t terribly engaging or exciting either. Dashawn Kelley probably comes off best as minion of the month, and he’s simply doing schtick left over from Irving Pichel in Dracula’s Daughter (1936) – the film this sort of seems to be riffing off.
Discussion
No comments yet.