Getting Blood from a Shan

Book Review: BIRTH OF A KILLER
Written by: Darren Shan
252 pages – HarperCollins – 2010
www.darrenshan.com
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[SPOILERS] As I declared in my review of 2009's Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant film, the colourful big-screen adaptation was my first (surrogate) taste of the works of teen horror author Darren Shan. So while reading the serial saga-ist’s newest published work may seem like an odd aperture into his considerable canon, let it be known that Birth of a Killer is the first chapter in a new chronicle: The Saga of Larten Crepsley.

If that name sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Larten Crepsley is the vampire to whom (the fictional protagonist) Darren Shan becomes beholden in the opening book of (the author) Darren Shan’s most popular series: The Saga of Darren Shan, and given how the aforementioned filmic reworking was based upon the opening trio of books from that saga, I, too, was aware of Larten Crepsley. But Birth of a Killer (and, I would assume, the forthcoming volumes in this new collection) is a prequel to the events already told, which is why I had no quarms in diving in at the end of the beginning.

Set at the dawn of the nineteenth century and beginning when Larten is a human child on the cusp of his teenage years, Birth of a Killer wastes no time in hitting the reader hard: within the first four chapters you have already borne witness to two vividly brutal murders and a sickening display of child cruelty. Now, I understand that life back then was a world away from the unionised comfort of a twenty-first century factory – from an early age children were effectively slaves toiling twelve hour days in the most pitiful workplace conditions – but quite how suitable this kind of brutality is within the pages of a vampire fantasy novel aimed at teen readers, I’m not sure.

The book’s extreme opening certainly shocked me – and I’m 26 – but it is also important to point out that these scenes take place before any supernatural activity is even suggested; it is set in the real world and leaves more of an impact for that very reason. Soon though, as young Larten meets the vampire Seba Nile and – in a mirroring of the events in Cirque Du Freak – becomes his assistant, the novel settles down into more recognisably conventional genre territory.

Alas, conventional territory is where Birth of a Killer lingers, and even with my hardly vast knowledge of Darren Shan’s universe I couldn’t help but think that the author was playing things a little too safe. A shame, after the ultra-violent risk of the opening, but too many previously established properties – Vampire Mountain, Cirque Du Freak, Mr Tall, Murlough – are either visited or turn up along the way. An occasional reference or tip of his hat to his faithful audience I could accept, but Shan seems mired in the familiar and his latest work suffers for this lack of innovation.

Despite a large typeface and even larger spacing between the lines, Shan manages to span a good few decades of Larten’s afterlife in the lean 252 page novel. He achieves this by splitting his narrative into four parts and using the pauses in the story as an excuse to catapult forward a great wealth of time. This never becomes confusing (the story quickly catches up with the intervening months or years) but it does begin to feel increasingly bare-boned; if Larten’s rebirth is so uneventful that great chunks can be ignored, then why bother to tell his story in the first place? Let’s hope the subsequent releases in this unfledged saga will justify their creation.


In a CR@B Shell: Quarms with the predictable plot aside, Birth of a Killer is unlikely to disappoint Shan’s clan, and it’s an enjoyable if insubstantial time-filler which doesn’t ostracise newcomers. Just don’t expect a radical or revolutionary read.
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Fear Made Flesh

DVD Review: THE HOLE
12 – 88mins – 2010
Written by: Mark L. Smith
Directed by: Joe Dante
Starring: Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Nathan Gamble, Teri Polo, Quinn Lord, Peter Skinkoda, Bruce Dern
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[SPOILERS] As an avid viewer of some truly twisted and gory horror films (regular readers will be more than aware that I'm a huge George A. Romero and vampire fan), I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I was genuinely spooked by some of the “sustained moderate horror” (as the BBFC classifies it) in this apparently child-friendly 12-rated adventure. Am I going soft or are 21st century tots getting tougher?

But credit where credit is due, and it is no surprise that Joe Dante, the man who transformed cutesy mogwai's into vicious reptilian beasties, is once more behind the camera for another similarly veined frightener for the whole family. But those with especially young and/or sensitive nippers be warned: despite being released theatrically in child-hooking 3D, The Hole is far more analogous to genuinely dark horrors such as The Ring than vivid adventure fantasies such as The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Initially dispirited at having to move to yet another new town, brothers Dane (Massoglia) and Lucas Thompson (Gamble) are soon engrossed in the secrets that lay hidden in a mysterious and seemingly bottomless hole they find in their new basement. Why was the chasm padlocked shut, and does its reopening have any connection to the sinister apparitions the lads have recently been experiencing?

Less pristine and glossy than most modern Hollywood productions, The Hole's character-driven narrative and genuine performances from Cirque du Freak's Massoglia, newcomer Gamble and Haley Bennett as girl-next-door Julie, help elevate this chiller above the pack of derivative and schlocky genre flicks, despite reliance's upon stock clichés such as possessed dolls (Chucky), scary clowns (It) and ghostly little girls (The Shining, Poltergeist, Don't Look Now, etcetera).

As the mystery of the nightmarish visions gradually and expertly drip-feeds to reveal enlightening glimpses of the character's deepest fears, The Hole takes a bold and rather dark plunge by climaxing with a Gothic funhouse showdown between a monstrously abusive father and his teenage son, whose view is distorted by the terrifying memories he carries of a dad he loathes and fears instead of loves.

It's a risk which more than pays off by granting hard-as-nails Dane an all-too-understandable third dimension, even if it does provide another case for why I feel this film isn't quite the whimisical fantasy lark it was advertised as. My closing argument? The blood-crying, limp-walking Annie Smith (Lord) – made even more creepy by the fact that she's played by a boy in a wig. Hole-y moly indeedy.


In a CR@B Shell: An effectively spooky shocker which admirably juggles its broad audience – kids and adults alike will be scared stiff by this dark, engrossing and fully-rounded horror.
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Bizarre Attraction

DVD Review: CIRQUE DU FREAK: THE VAMPIRE'S ASSISTANT
12 – 109mins – 2009
Screenplay by: Paul Weitz and Brian Helgeland
Based on the Vampire Blood trilogy by: Darren Shan
Directed by: Paul Weitz
Starring: John C. Reilly, Chris Massoglia, Josh Hutcherson, Jessica Carlson, Patrick Fugit, Michael Cerveris, Ray Stevenson, Ken Watanabe, Kristen Schaal, Orlando Jones, Frankie Faison, Willem Dafoe
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Following my exasperation at what Hollywood had done when reimagining Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising (reviewed HERE) for the 21st century movie-goer, I decided to “go in blind” when watching their celluloid translation of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, so I could judge the film for what it is, rather than what it could or should have been; an independent entity separate from its source material.

I have been reliably informed that I made the correct decision, for all manner of major and minor plot, character and chronological edits have left fans of the fantastical prose reeling with disappointment. Pour exemple: uprooting the setting from the UK to US means a cross-Atlantic vacation is obviously dropped, while the protagonist's love interest (Carlson) is reformatted into an adage-spouting circus monkey. Literally. But I, of course, will never know any of this... Not first hand, at any rate.

Based on the opening trio of novels – referred to as the Vampire Blood trilogy – from British author Darren Shan's twelve book teen vamp-chise, this flashy, spectacle-filled adaptation boasts an impressive line-up of big name stars, many of whom are willing to get “f-ed up” (that's freaked up, FYI) with all manner of grisly and peculiar ailments and, er, talents, for all of five minutes screen time.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls: Roll up, roll up and witness for yourself a man with an impossibly small torso (“Alexander Ribs”) who looks like his gut has been eaten away; a bloater who appears to be literally eating for two (“Rhamus Twobellies”); a woman whose jumbo chompers can bite through anything (“Gertha Teeth”); a hairy beast of a bloke (“Wolf Man”); a scaly serpent charmer (“Evra the Snake Boy”); a gal with the power to re-grow appendages (“Corma Limbs”); and no freak show would be complete without a bearded lady who can also predict the future (“Madame Truska”, gamely played by Mexican beauty Salma Hayek).

You're enticed, right? And so you should be. The Vampire's Assistant goes all-out to create a gothic fun house of a show which is far darker – and more verbally blue – than any family friendly fantasy yet. But herein lies the problem which plagues Paul Weitz's film: the weird and wonderful oddities which comprise the travelling freak show of the title are its main draw. They are far more alluring than the reputed star of the show and his independence-attaining plot arc.

Evra: “What kind of freak of you?”
Darren: “Oh, I'm not a freak. I'm normal.”
Evra: “You're normal?”
Darren: “No. I mean, I'm a half vampire, but I'm completely normal”

Arachnid-loving 16 year old Darren (Massoglia) is perhaps a little too normal and too bland to acquire affinity from the audience, so even when he agrees to become blood-sucking gent Larten Crepsley's (Reilly) stooge and leave his family behind in order to save the life of his comatose rebel of a best mate (Hutcherson), you never really feel any sympathy. His family, also, have such a tiny role that their grief at the loss of their eldest born is never conveyed.

And so you watch, dispassionately, as Darren gets sucked into a long-battled civil war between Crepsley's more gentile vampire faction, and their darker, more violent, human-slaughtering blood brothers, the vampaneze. But your only real interest throughout is seeing what manner of bizarre prosthetic and CG abnormality will grace the screen next.

Frankly, that really isn't good enough for a blockbuster franchise kick-starter, is it? And franchise kick-starter The Vampire's Assistant incontestably is, with Willem Dafoe's 'tached vampire general Gavner Purl and rotund curiosity Mr Tiny (Cerveris) servicing the story only by hinting at future events which, sequel-pending, we may never witness off the page.


In a CR@B Shell: Creepy, kooky and all-together loopy, there's definite fun to be had with The Vampire's Assistant, but it's plain to see that the main attraction is far less entertaining than the Cirque's sidelined sideshows.
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