True Bloodthirst (2012)

hyped garbage

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Of course it has bad effects and makeup; but for Syfy this was actually a pretty good movie with a decent plot and characters. I loved watching the interaction between the humans and vampires and after years of True Blood it's nice to see humans who aren't weak and can take care of themselves. The romances were pretty shallow and forced but I could tolerate it. I recommend watching the movie just don't go in with high expectations.

The story is not terrificly original but what vampire flick is? Any cleverness or wit was severely hampered by sluggish editing, badly executed effects (the slap!), poor/lack of decent music to set any kind of mood or drama, and barren sets (the club and strip club were really awful).I had already read the True Blood rip off theory and although they do have synthetic blood the similarity is mild. There are elements from a few in the genre, even Bram's original. The title was unfortunate.What I did like: the Romanian setting; with mention of old Drac himself, and vamp hunter Jonny Harker ha! The big beasties are quite cute, and the double cross intrigue mildly interesting. The actors were not wooden (well most of them) A decent story poorly executed. It had potential for so much more, shame.I've seen better effects in TV shows and think it would have made a better TV miniseries with CGI. Would love to know the budget? and if it wasn't very big then basically why bother?? With all the other movies out there and technology of today it should have been better.It kept my interest all the way through and apart from the forced camaraderie between vamps and humans being a bit lame I liked the characters, they were more likable than in some Hollywood Blockbusters.6/10 for effort of the actors and writers (and some of the production staff)

Most SyFy movies are terrible, but to me there is something compulsively watchable about them, and I always do hope that they churn out something decent in a while. Actually they have, but as I've said, a vast majority of them are really bad to bottom-of-the-barrel. True Bloodthirst is one of their more tolerable movies. It is far from perfect, I have certainly seen worse special effects but they are rather artificial looking, and the creatures are more dumb than they are menacing. The script is rather hackneyed with too much of a goofy tone and more complicated than it needed to be, and the story while less dull than most SyFy features and it actually has a promising concept suffers from a lack of focus, it never knows what it wants to be, and too many scenes that fall into predictability. The characters are again an improvement, they are not that annoying and not made to do stupid things as often as these SyFy characters tend to but at the same time they could have here done with more development. On the plus side, the locations are beautiful to look at and actually used atmospherically. The soundtrack is more than decent too, not overbearing and much more fitting with the style of the film. The editing is not as choppy as I thought it would be as well, and the acting is better than average. I loved Andrew Lee Potts in Alice, he made that series work, and while not as good, he brings some charisma to his role as a vampire slayer if not as consistently hardcore as he could have been. Ben Lambert immediately appealed to me especially in his interactions with the sadly underused Heida Reed. Neil Jackson captures the angst of his character very well. Roark Chritchlow is both slimy and authoritative, his character is clichéd but he being a veteran in this kind of role he makes an effort to make it more interesting despite the accent. All in all, a tolerable if flawed SyFy movie. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Maybe I went into watching this movie for entirely the wrong reasons. Primarily those were that a) I like a good vampire flick, heck... sometimes I even like a very bad vampire flick ( but not this one ) and b) I like Andrew Lee Potts. I had a bit of a soft spot for him after totally falling for Hatter in Alice that I then followed him to Primeval where that cheeky little chipmunk face just made me want to hug a pillow. So during a late night bed-avoidance TV channel surf I came across this little nugget of mucus on the SyFy channel... which incidentally should stop changing it's title cos we all know that a rose by any other name will still smell of horse manure at it's base. There are some moderate performances, but no real character depth to speak of. The best of the bunch, in my opinion, was probably Neil Jackson who came across best when he was being a bit angsty, but as for Andrew...dear sweet Andrew... no. Just.. no. Awful. He slide in and out of his accent so often I'd swear he was lubricated. The Assorted Girls With Long Hair ran around and looked pretty and there was so much clichéd sci-fi posturing I wish I'd turned it into a drinking game.So in summary, it was never ever going to win an Oscar. The script was underwhelming, the effects look like they were funded with someone's lunch money, acting didn't overwhelmingly stink .. but you wouldn't want to sit next to it on the bus either. I gave it a 3 because sucky as this may be it's still a vampire movie, and Andrew is still gerbilishously adorable. That said, when my daughter vomited all over her bed just after the ending credits due to a particularly nasty gastric flu I can't say I wasn't relieved to have something less dire than this film to focus on as I climbed into bed.