Visually and dramatically, this movie heralds the Alliance Shift in Canadian film-making: the move from unpredictable, chaotic incompetence to shiny, meaningless competence. It brings to mind Stephen King's description of Prophecy: "Slick but also somehow cheesy, like a dead rat in a lucite block". And I use the word competence loosely; maybe 'professionalism' would be a better term. It's a vampire flick, so let's have a blue light going this way, a red light going that way, and instead of atmosphere you get a neon shop after hours: how 90s. (That's not even to mention the shots that didn't quite work out but got left in anyway: some of the indoor connecting stuff is Ug-Ly!) The funny thing, for a movie that is trying to channel Anne Rice, is how frumpy everyone is: the vampires have like wisdom fangs or something, they're way out at the side so they look all jowly and have to open verrry wide to display them. In full fetter the vampire cabbie looks like Gilbert Gottfried playing Al Lewis at a costume party. And Helen Papas comes off more like a line producer than a romantic lead; it's like she wandered in front of the camera by mistake. Or perhaps she was coerced by her pal the aspiring director.
Review of Graveyard Shift
