I saw this film at this year's Frightfest short film showcase.
This film is entertaining enough but it has a lot of unforgivable flaws.
The film, as I understand, was made by only one guy. So one must forgive the ugly looking animation, poor voice work and muffled soundtrack. In fact, one could consider this a good start for an animation filmmaker. However, this film has one major flaw that took me right out of the film.
The thing that bugged me the most was that the film was utter unoriginal, having borrowed everything from existing films: The vampires are a shameless copy of the vampires in 30 Days of Night, and the main character is a copy of Samurai Jack, as is the sky background which is almost copy paste from Monkey Island. The list goes on and on.
I read an interview with the director where he actually acknowledged all these references. But the thing is that acknowledging it as references doesn't make it okay. When referencing other films, one must put a new spin on it, make fun of it, or do it in a clever way. This film doesn't do any of these things. It just steals lots of elements from existing properties and assembles it altogether. That is very cheap filmmaking in my opinion.
I really hope that the director improves his storytelling capabilities and tries to tell an original story next time.
This film is entertaining enough but it has a lot of unforgivable flaws.
The film, as I understand, was made by only one guy. So one must forgive the ugly looking animation, poor voice work and muffled soundtrack. In fact, one could consider this a good start for an animation filmmaker. However, this film has one major flaw that took me right out of the film.
The thing that bugged me the most was that the film was utter unoriginal, having borrowed everything from existing films: The vampires are a shameless copy of the vampires in 30 Days of Night, and the main character is a copy of Samurai Jack, as is the sky background which is almost copy paste from Monkey Island. The list goes on and on.
I read an interview with the director where he actually acknowledged all these references. But the thing is that acknowledging it as references doesn't make it okay. When referencing other films, one must put a new spin on it, make fun of it, or do it in a clever way. This film doesn't do any of these things. It just steals lots of elements from existing properties and assembles it altogether. That is very cheap filmmaking in my opinion.
I really hope that the director improves his storytelling capabilities and tries to tell an original story next time.