KEY POINTS:
Herald Rating: * * *
Cast: Saffron Burrows, Dougray Scott, Leo Gregory
Director: Glenn Standring
Rating: R16, violence, offensive language and horror
Running time: 84 mins
Screening: SkyCity, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas
Verdict: Vampires get a potentially fascinating rethink in local horror-thriller which otherwise bites off more than it can chew.
There's so much intriguing thinking behind locally-made internationally-cast vampire flick Perfect Creature - which is matched by a bold sense of style on screen - it's hard not to enjoy the flawed result just for its grand ambitions.
Director-writer Glenn Standring's second horror film after The Irrefutable Truth About Demons sure doesn't want to be just another vampire movie.
No, it wants to be a steampunk Catholic-themed reworking of vampire mythology. And one set in NZ - well, an industrial-gothic parallel universe called "Nuovo Zealandia" of "1969" (but taking most of its technological cues from the previous century).
There, mankind and a protective order of science boffin-vampires known as The Brothers live in harmony. So long as the locals' blood donations keep coming to the Church of Holy Brotherhood, that is.
Of course, it's only time before the balance is upset, forcing detective Lilly (Burrows) to team up with brooding brother Silus (Scott) to bring in Edgar - a rogue vampire who thinks his kind should follow their baser instincts - before there is a panic in the city's human population.
But having established its intriguing twilight zone, Perfect Creature is soon let down by its muddled story structure which sacrifices dramatic tension for abundant exposition.
Meanwhile its leads start coming down with a sort of creeping anaemia which make them less vital as time wears on with yet another chase through those dark dank streets.
The performances of Burrows and Scott are solid, though their on-screen partnership seems oddly constrained from developing any inter-species romantic chemistry, while Gregory's Edgar might be the bloody-chinned mad villain of the piece but he's a weak point in the grand scheme.
With the resident monster being insufficiently scary, Perfect Creature can't cut it on the horror front, while its action thrills aren't up to much either, and the underlying story about genetic engineering and the Brothers' dabbles in the lab only add to the confusion.
If its genre-mashing set-up outstrips its storytelling, at least Perfect Creature's atmosphere and production design sure give good gothic. But it still feels like a film of grand ambition and much unfulfilled potential.
