
Not in any way does The Vampire Next Door follow the lines of a classic scary film, rather it is an amusing film that has a good amount of humor in it and has elements of romantic comedies and issues typical for a coming-of-age movie. It is a light-hearted movie where a few people die, so to speak, but there is not too much gore in the special effects for their own sake.
Such a conclusion is appropriate in view of the fact that the film uses some ideas from The Girl Next Door (2004), now a classic film in its own right and one of the best romantic comedies. As The Vampire Next Door also does, I remember the other movie A Party Animal, a college fantasy comedy that didn’t really hit the pages of popular magazines because it has little in common with a classic college comedy. We can only hope that The Vampire Next Door will have a better fate.
The lead character is a young man by the name of Cameron (Alex Matthews), who suffers from typical teenage issues such as a nagging mother who tends to comment incessantly on his unhealthy eating habits, and a father in a hurry for him to find himself and a steady career path. However, the worst of it all, Cameron remains hopelessly infatuated with his teenage sweetheart Diane (Bella Chadwick) who looks like an image straight out of a ‘Playboy’ calendar but hasn’t had the guts to approach her and profess his love even once. Things take a turn for the worse when Cameron’s neighbors, having moved in only recently, comprise a stunning young vampire, Victoria (Jessica Ferguson), whose attractiveness leads him in a downward spiral.
Like in his previous roles, in The Girl Next Door, Cameron finds himself in a similar scenario when he’s busy in his bedroom and unsurprisingly looks out the window when he hears movement; only this time around, instead of being greeted by a moving curtain, it’s a ‘hot’ concept and something he had no control over.
Unfortunately for him, this time when he is caught, it is not Victoria crossing over the street and ringing the doorbell, rather it’s her appearing in his bedroom and teasing him about whether he enjoys watching her change clothes.
Surprisingly calm to the sudden disappearance of Victoria, Cameron demands her to leave his room but in vain as she is not easy to shake off. She claims that it is necessary to take her to some place and she will tell Cameron’s parents how their son is a peeper. Thus begins an unusual and interesting friendship.
Cameron begins to drive Victoria to some place and they go to an industrial unit. A man opens the door for her and lets her in, sometime later the man comes running out screaming for help. Victoria grabs him by the car, where she finds Cameron shaking. Then, without hesitation, she kills him by tearing off a piece of skin from around the neck area with her sharp teeth. Cameron was wondering why her face was so vascularized and she had so much blood on her mouth because now he knew the reason, there was a vampire right next to him.
Now that he has earned the trust of Victoria, what he thought was just a one-time job, gradually turns into something more as she forces him to be her driver during the future hunting trips.
The second kill is not as clean as the first one and Cameron has to deal with the image of Victoria sucking blood off her fingers and around her mouth. Later in the night, feeling that she owes Cameron an explanation, Victoria visits his room again, this time in his bed and with all her clothes missing.
It seems that Victoria is not the ruthless monster that he thought she was and this is because she originates from the Clan whose male supreme was her spouse and creator. She has been hunting the vampires responsible for his death for over two hundred years.
When Cameron realizes that he is assisting Victoria in executing vampires and this is not murder, he surprisingly feels thrilled to be promoted to Victoria’s aide. It should be noted that most of the vampires whom she has tracked down in the town are relatively young and simple to execute. The last vampire on her list, a female, is older than her so she would be a tougher match to overcome. However, it is she who severed Victoria’s master’s neck so she has no option to back down.
“The Vampire Next Door” is one of the most entertaining films I have watched in a while. It is relatively long, at an hour and 50 minutes, but I would have been okay with it being a little bit longer because I enjoyed the characters and plot so much.
I assume money was tight while making the film, but The Vampire Next Door actually feels like a typical indie. It has a solid plot, is nicely filmed, and most of the cast members, who have only four films in their filmographies, do deliver good quality acting.
In the past, Alex Mathews has worked on a few short films and featured on the Unearthed Tapes Sketch Show. The Vampire Next Door seems to be his movie debut as it is his only feature-length film. However, the viewer does not get the impression of a beginner as there are numerous quotes and amusing performances as well as comical expressions during bizarre parts of the film. If you are looking for chills throughout this film, you might want to think again. Though there are a couple of violent sequences, they are merely sprinkled into the action and the so-called vampires are more likely to amuse than otherwise. As such, viewers expecting this to be just another horror film may not enjoy The Vampire Next Door.
Jessica Ferguson makes a good case for being cast as Victoria. Other than making a sane choice to star in a short film entitled Cobra City, her involvement in The Vampire Next Door would be missed. The sexy bad-ass vampire who’s played by Jessica Ferguson could have been built for the task of taking Cameron under her wing, paying more attention to him, instilling more self-confidence in him, and also developing his fighting skills when he riles up a few blokes who’ve been giving him a hard time since high school.
Victoria in this particular case is seriously hot and has made advances towards him on more than one occasion, but in the end, embers of Cameron’s heart are never kindled with desires for her, as always it’s Diane who captures his affections. Cameron and Diane have become friends seeing as there is no romantic interest so naturally considering them as a couple is wishful thinking.
One does not have to look much deeper into this film before there are indications that perhaps Diane is waiting quite patiently for Cameron to do something first. That never happens but due to an interplay of events, he finds himself trying to help his friend Martin (Andrew Larkin) gain back Diane’s trust after he ditched her during the prom and make a move on her for the second time.
One can confidently assert that the story takes a few intriguing and unforeseen directions as well. There is a lot happening. Victoria manages to find her last victim, Martin gets to have a date with Diane and as for Cam, he matures, figures out his calling, and goes through several important stages of development.
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