Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Perfect Creature


I think I covered just about everything in the title. This movie was an eclectic combination of ideas. This movie takes place in an alternate universe where vampires and humans exist in a symbiotic relationship. The delicate balance is shattered leading to a suspenseful trip through a pretend world. Note: This review will reveal only minor details concerning the plot.

This film was written and directed by Glenn Standring. This is the only film from this writer/director that I have seen. He has only been involved in a couple of other films, but has won one award and been nominated for a couple of others. The dialogue in this movie has a British tilt. The writing does not bog down and there are not a lot of wasted words. The writing is exceptional for a film that moves along rather slowly. The pace of this film tends to be slow, but that is not uncommon with vampire films.

Creating An Alternate Universe...If you are allowed to create a vampire movie based in an alternate reality, where do you go with it? Vampire movies have a Gothic flavor, so there should be a bit of Goth. But how would another world progress differently from our own? This was a concept explored in the television series Sliders. I always enjoyed that series. What we end up with is a world where vampires emerged and brought cures to illness. They are a Priesthood, a Brotherhood, that protects humankind in exchange for blood offerings. So what does a world like this look like? Perfect Creature does a phenomenal job of creating a slum based in a time frame that would mirror our own early 1900's, but with advanced technology. But the technology looks like it is from the early 1900s. It is an odd amalgam of various eras combined into a single time period. It is hard to explain what this world looks like, but imagine everything you own currently being possible 100 years ago, but designed with the look of that time period. That is what this movie looks like. It is visually intriguing and is done tastefully and in great detail. This film is supposed to be set in an alternate New Zealand in the 1960's, but borrows heavily from many eras.

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