Boys from County Hell (2021)
Directed by Chris Baugh
A crew of hardy road workers, led by a bickering Father and Son, must survive the night when they accidentally awaken an ancient Irish vampire.
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7 films that influenced Boys from County Hell
What critics say influenced Boys from County Hell
It’s believed to have inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula , which has led tourists to arrive from time to time, but when Francie’s ragtag construction team destroys the rocks, it just might reveal that the legend is not just a myth, but a big lanky vampire waiting to be fed.
The rural Irish village of Six Mile Hill is notable for one reason: a local vampire legend that supposedly inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula .
Local lore is that this demonic villain was the true vampire that inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula .
They find simple joys in playing pranks on tourists passing through, thanks to their town claiming to have inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula .
I expected something in the same ballpark as Shaun Of The Dead, a genre-bender featuring underqualified protagonists, repressed family issues springing to the surface, and gallons of blood.
It seeks to emulate AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (there’s even a dialogue reference, along with a whole sequence that’s fairly similar) or SHAUN OF THE DEAD.
It’s a similar relationship that Edgar Wright utilized between Simon Pegg’s Shaun and his step-father, played by Bill Nighy, in Shaun of the Dead that helped his debut go from a hilarious zombie film to something more substantial.
Think Shaun of the Dead meets 30 Days of Night , where the local myth of a blood sucking vampire turns out to be true and the regulars at the pub have to find a way to save the whole county.
Naturally, this leads me to think this was going to be an over-the-top affair similar to Shaun of the Dead .
Some of his imagery is suitably scary, and a few comic asides click as planned, but the moments never escalate like they do in “Fright Night” or “Shaun of the Dead,” two superior horror-comedies.
Whether that’s Eugene’s favorite watering hole, “The Stoker” with its An American Werewolf In London vibes, or “Dream Warriors” as background tunes, or the Rolodex of anti-vampire defense methods debated by these gruff and resourceful road workers.
That’s okay, because Baugh and Brendan Mullin have co-written a script that embraces a fun group of characters, and mixes in a vampire folklore that reminds me of something similar to An American Werewolf in London .
It seeks to emulate AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (there’s even a dialogue reference, along with a whole sequence that’s fairly similar) or SHAUN OF THE DEAD.
In recent years, there has been a reemergence of inventive horror-comedies with films like The Wolf Of Snow Hollow , One Cut Of the Dead , and What We Do In The Shadows , each giving fresh (after)life to classic horror archetypes as classics like Fright Night and An American Werewolf In London did in the genre’s heyday.
Indeed, a couple of Canadian backpackers, gussied up like they’ve just walked off the set of An American Werewolf in London, arrive and are taken to the site, where the titular protagonists scare them with a fake hand.
Although Boys from County Hell makes several nods to vampire classics such as The Lost Boys, the core relationship isn’t romantic or even between friends.
Once the evil is unleashed, Boys from County Hell kicks into gear and takes another page from the horror-comedy playbook with a wink or two to The Lost Boys .
In a manner similar to The Lost Boys, they go through a standard list of methods to kill and ward the creature off: stake through the heart, sunlight, etc.
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In Andrea Arnold’s American Honey she was a tough-beeyutch southern belle, in Confederate-flag bikini, cut-off jeans and leopard-skin tops.
Baugh defies Universal Monster logic by presenting an overlord vampire who wills the sucking of blood without confrontation, restructuring typical stakes seen repeatedly in films like From Dusk Till Dawn , Byzantium , What We Do in the Shadows , even Twilight .
In recent years, there has been a reemergence of inventive horror-comedies with films like The Wolf Of Snow Hollow , One Cut Of the Dead , and What We Do In The Shadows , each giving fresh (after)life to classic horror archetypes as classics like Fright Night and An American Werewolf In London did in the genre’s heyday.
From the independent, laid back take by Jim Jarmusch in Only Lovers Left Alive , the recent comedy stylings of What We Do in the Shadows , the YA romance of the Twilight movies, and the superhero action of the Blade films.
It’s one of the ways Baugh and his team differentiate themselves from other vampire work; reinventing them as nonverbal, murderous creatures rather than what you might see in something like What We Do in the Shadows .
O’Neill’s look resembles Sam Neill’s similarly kind-hearted but hard-edged character from Hunt for the Wilderpeople and watching his relationship with Eugene slowly thaw under admittedly bizarre circumstances is comparably heartwarming.