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vampire

Kicking Blood: Kicking the Habit

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“You gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight” – Leonard Cohen

To be fair, Cohen’s words were likely never meant to connect with vampire films. But they certainly apply to Kicking Blood.

Kicking Blood tells the story of Anna (Alanna Bale), a young vampire who must feed on the blood of others to survive. Together with her brood, they feed nightly off of toxic men and thrive off the high they feel after doing so. However, when she meets a humble alcoholic named Robbie (Luke Bilyk) who tries to get clean, Anna begins to wonder if she can kick her own habit of consuming blood as well, even if doing so could kill her.

Directed and co-written by Blaine Thurman (The New Pornographers), Kicking Blood has a surprising amount of bite to its story. Tightly the written and executed, Blood may be brief but also has something to say. Clocking in at a paltry 75 minutes, Thurman’s film takes a much more metaphorical approach with its storytelling. Although the film fully leans into its horror elements, Blood is equally as interested in exploring the trauma of abuse and its relationship to addiction as well. In this world, death is a dark and mysterious place… but what does it mean to live? Is it possible to begin again when what came before is so broken? These are the questions that are embedded within Thurman’s tale of blood that make it worth exploring.

At first, Blood feels very much like revenge film. As Anna chooses her victims, we quickly notice a pattern beginning to form. Each prey that she targets has been some form of predator. Whether adulterous or abusive, each of Anna’s victims reveals their sins. As such, she appears to justify her kills as an act of vengeance against the darkness of man. (Who’s going to miss men who have hurt others like that, right?) In this way, her feedings are given shades of justice as she fights on behalf of those who have been hurt. If these victims cannot stand up for themselves, she will do it for them.

When she meets Robbie though, things begin to change. Broken by alcoholism, Robbie is ready to die and suggests that he is willing to let Anna take his life. However, in doing so, she sees something different in him. His humility and repentant soul are different than the other men that she has fed upon. In this way, there’s a complexity within their relationship that complicates this tale of vengeance. As Anna’s instinctive desire to feed battles a burgeoning compassion, suddenly she struggles to bring herself to end his life. 

Unlike the others, Robbie may worth saving.

However, her experience with him also begins to show her things about herself. It’s here that Blood’s metaphor begins to shift. Whereas once feeding took on an element of justice or revenge, now it seems to point to addiction. For Anna, her desire to inflict violence masks an inner rage that she carries within her. While each kill may be necessary for her to live, it also gives her an energetic high that keeps her going. Even so, her experience with Robbie challenges her to choose a new path for herself. While her friends feed for the rush, Anna decides to try and break free from the painful pattern that rules her life.

Whether or not that’s possible for her is another story.

Dark and edgy, Kicking Blood makes good use of its runtime to prove its point. Using vampires as a metaphor for addiction and abuse, Blood takes one of the darkest of classic villain tropes and uses it to explore what it takes to find hope and healing at a time when it feels most elusive. 

After all, as the man says, when darkness falls, Blood reminds us that we can kick against it.

Kicking Blood is available in select theatres on Friday, April 15th, 2022.

Carmilla – Sin Lurking at the Door

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Vampires have a wide range of portrayals in our culture. They have scared us (Noferatu, and Dracula), become love interests (the Twilight series), a metaphor for sexual variation (True Blood), comic figures (What We Do in the Shadows), or a mixture of all of the above (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). In Emily Harris’s film Carmilla, we find a story that might make us think about the nature of sin.

The film is based on a 1871 gothic novel by Joseph Sheridan La Fanu, which predates Bram Stoker’s Dracula by a quarter century. That novel is seen as the prototype of the Lesbian Vampire genre. Lara (Hanna Rae) is a teenaged girl who lives on a remote estate with her father and strict governess, Miss Fontaine (Jessica Raine). The first thing we notice about Lara is that she is left-handed. Miss Fontaine frequently binds Lara’s left hand behind her back to break her of this dangerous habit. (The left hand invites the devil, she says.) We also discover that Lara is attracted to books from her father’s library that have dark illustrations.

Lara is anticipating a visit from a girl from the next town over—an opportunity for companionship that she sorely lacks. But when the girl is suddenly taken ill, that visit is cancelled. But then there is a carriage accident that brings a mysterious girl (Devrim Lingnau) Lara’s age to the estate to recuperate. Lara is very taken by the girl, who they agree should be called Carmilla. They begin to grow close. Carmilla awakens things in Lara that first lead to strange dreams, and then to some romantic encounters with Carmilla. After they become “blood sisters”, Lara slowly becomes ill.

The film offers wonderful cinematography, playing with light and dark, and the beauty and corruption present in nature. The gothic mood of the film comes from the music more than from the darkness that we often associate with such stories.

We might well mark the absence of much of the vampire lore that we expect. There are ample crosses in the story. The girls frequently go out in daylight with no harm. If Carmilla is indeed a vampire, that is seen more in her corrupting, and tempting nature. It is this that raises ideas of the nature of sin.

In the story of Cain and Abel, God says to Cain: “And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen. 4:7, NRSV). From the time we hear Miss Fontaine chide Lara for using her left hand because it invites the devil, we get a picture of a worldview in which sin is looking for an opportunity to capture people—in this case, Lara. Sin and temptation, as seen in the person of Carmilla, is an opportunity to elicit feelings and actions that already have touched lives. It is of interest that books with darkness in them are already in Lara’s house, even if she isn’t supposed to be seeing them. Another such book, even more graphic, is found in Carmilla’s wrecked carriage. (Was it hers?)

The gothic worldview of sin as something outside of us waiting to devour our souls is not resonant with my own theology, but I can appreciate the understanding of sin as a corrupting force the is really a result of what already lies within us.

Carmilla is available through Virtual Cinema at local art house websites.

Photos courtesy of Film Movement.

Preacher, S2: The Wandering Preacher Returns

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Combining the dry dustiness of Breaking Bad, the dark humour of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the unpredictable violence and bleakness of Game of Thrones, Preacher continues to establish itself as one of the more unique voices in television.  Following the journey of Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), a small-town preacher possessed with the spirit of an angel/demon hybrid name Genesis, the show frequently breaks new ground as it explores the border between edgy storytelling and spiritual conversation.

Season 2 picks up almost immediately after the events of last year’s season finale, as Jesse, girlfriend Tulip (Ruth Negga) and Irish vampire Cassidy (Joe Gilgun) have set out on their spiritual quest to find God, who is missing from Heaven.  Unaware of the destruction of their hometown of Annville, the trio venture out into the Texas wilderness, fuelled by their anger towards the Almighty but without any actual direction.  To make matters worse, Jesse is also being pursued relentlessly by the Saint of Killers (Graham McTavish), a Hell-bound assassin hired kill him in order to reclaim Genesis.

With its dark tone and violent imagery, Preacher likely isn’t for everyone and season two certainly ups the ante.  (In the premiere alone, we are witness to multiple deaths and the most creative use of an intestine ever.)  However, the script and storytelling are so bold and rich that it continues to be one of the most theologically challenging shows in recent years (or, potentially, ever). Painted as an anti-heroic preacher, Jesse’s quest for God is more out of vengeance than reverence.  He, and his partners-in-crime, are broken and lost, cursed to roam the earth looking for answers.  Their home town has been completely wiped out, presumably devoid of survivors.  For them, there is no true place of safety and rest anymore.  In Preacher, theirs is the very definition of a desolate life.

But it’s in the midst of this anguish that the film reveals a genuine spiritual interest.  For example, when it’s revealed in last season’s finale that God is absent, the people completely give themselves over to their deepest and darkest impulses.  In a moment of sheer acquiescence, the people of Annville are so lost that they literally explode.  Yet, this fall to despair ultimately demonstrates a desire… no, a need… for God to rule.  Though the brokenness stems from a feeling of abandonment, it subsequently also shows that there is a reason that belief matters.

At the heart of this show is an angst and recklessness that echoes the current state of our global culture.  While some would argue that the purpose of religious interests is merely to impose rules and ‘keep people in line’, Preacher suggests that the need for God stems from a need for hope.  Like the people in Annville, our world has a desperate desire to believe that there is someone who has answers for the mess below.  Where is God in a world of hatred and evil?  Is it true that the only God that matters is the ‘god of meat’, as Quinncannon (Jackie Earle Haley) insists?  While these questions aren’t new to our world (or the media), what is drastically different is the tone and approach.  Unlike other spiritually themed shows, Preacher doesn’t merely tiptoe into questions like this… it runs full speed into them!

It’s this combination of spiritual boldness, dark humor and character that makes Preacher so interesting.  Like the smallest of plants taking root in the desert, Jesse’s quest still reveals a glimmer of life and hope in the midst of the dryness of the Texas desert.

Preacher returns on Sunday, June 25th on AMC and resumes on Monday nights beginning the 26th.