Bullet Points: Vampires: Los Muertos
Jon Bon Jovi as a vampire hunter. That’s why I watched this movie.
Synopsis: A vampire hunter and a priest fight a band of the walking dead in Mexico.
- What’s in a name?: I guess I’m being nit-picky from the start but the original John Carpenter joint had a lead character with the name Jack Crow. While this one does have a legendary singer with great hair filling the role, the name of Derek Bliss was a huge letdown in the name department. Forgetting the lackluster name, Bliss is a hunter who works on his own and takes vamp contracts from The Van Helsing Group. That’s much better….
- The Mission: Bliss gets a gig to find the priest from the first Vampires film and hunt down a group of “suckers” who have been ravaging Mexico. He takes his weird pistol that shoots wooden stakes and goes to a monastery that has very little chance of making it to the end of the film. Something about these vampires and their disdain for monasteries. Of course the mission goes awry when everyone starts getting killed and it’s left to our buddy Derek to put together a new team.
- Nods and connections: The connections with the original film don’t end with them merely mentioning the events that happened. This film essentially gives the same motivations to the master vampire here and we’re left with Derek Bliss and his team consisting of a compromised person instead of James Woods and his team consisting of a compromised person. One thing that James Woods didn’t have was a surfboard full of weapons! That was probably my favorite thing about Derek Bliss as a character and we only got to see it one time. It was an obvious nod to Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi and one that I truly enjoyed.
- Putting together a team: As often happens in these types of films, the vampire-killing team-building process is far easier than it feels like it should be. I know that if I needed to put a team of guys together to hunt down some vampires I could probably do it with just a few text messages but I’m also somewhat of a degenerate with friends who are far worse than myself. Bliss doesn’t have much trouble and he actually just kinda runs into half his team on his travels. The man who should have been his ace in the hole and the only actor who starred on Family Matters is Ray. He’s from Memphis. He also has some special shells for his shotgun that do a great job at killing suckers.
- Vampires aren’t great: Moving on from a blood-sucking Thomas Ian Griffith is tough. The first film in the series was blessed with a great cast and a villain that was physically imposing and scary as hell. Arly Jover takes over for TIG as our big boss vampire and she does so with mixed results. While she sounds smart (she did set up most of the plot for the film), she isn’t very proficient at killing named characters in the film. She did have her nips out, though, so that’s one point for her over TIG. Her minions are all throw-away vamps who get a few gruesome kills but have no chance against Bliss and his inexperienced crew.
- What’s the plan, man?: Now that Bliss, a young Diego Luna, and his other partners have a general idea of where Jover’s crew is hiding, they come up with some ‘rush in and kill them’ plan that never ever works ever. I guess you could say that Bliss isn’t used to working with a team and I’d buy that. They all do really well considering they’re a bunch of amateurs and one guy even keeps a big lie to himself only to reveal it later and basically spit in the faces of the vamps. There aren’t any dramatic deaths or heart-felt losses for the team so the odds never get too stacked against them. I suppose Derek Bliss’ laid-back surfer attitude is to blame for his lack of plan. Either way…it worked!
The Verdict: While Vampires: Los Muertos isn’t on the same level as the first film in the series, it at least is playing the same game. I had fun watching it and there are enough likeable characters and noteworthy actors that it feels like a real attempt a movie and not just a cash-in like so many DTV sequels. Bon Jovi isn’t amazing but he’s also not terrible. It helps that he’s surrounded by actors who pick up the slack and anyone who has seen the original already has a grasp of the story. In the end, not good but a decent follow up to a movie that I really liked.
