Stake Land (2010)
Directed by Jim Mickle
Martin was a normal teenage boy before the country collapsed in an empty pit of economic and political disaster. A vampire epidemic has swept across what is left of the nation's abandoned towns and cities, and it's up to Mister, a death dealing, rogue vampire hunter, to get Martin safely north to Canada, the continent's New Eden.
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5 films that influenced Stake Land
What critics say influenced Stake Land
The movie’s title and basic premise echo 2009’s Zombieland , but the resemblance ends there: Where Zombieland deftly mixes horror and goofy, pop-culture humor, Stake Land is dead-serious, even when it’s dropping vampires out of helicopters into lockdowns (think medieval armies using trebuchets to lob plague-ridden corpses into enemy territory); George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a much more apt comparison.
The similarity in the title of the indie vampire drama Stake Land (2010) and the 2009 comic zombie road movie horror Zombieland is coincidental but fitting, as much for the differences in the films as for the similarities.
The movie’s title and basic premise echo 2009’s Zombieland , but the resemblance ends there: Where Zombieland deftly mixes horror and goofy, pop-culture humor, Stake Land is dead-serious, even when it’s dropping vampires out of helicopters into lockdowns (think medieval armies using trebuchets to lob plague-ridden corpses into enemy territory); George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a much more apt comparison.
But if you can live with a different looking vampire threat, "Stake Land" is an above-average horror-thriller that gives us the same kind of engaging non-monster characters as we saw in "Zombieland."
The monsters here are powerful but not enough to where they pose a threat a la “Zombieland.”
There are echoes here of Zombieland (2009) and The Road (2009) but Stake Land seems most closely related to the films of George Romero, especially his recent outings such as Diary of the Dead (2007).
Otherwise, Stake Land starts off as a kind of very serious, dreary version of Zombieland .
Like the film version of Cormac McCarthy 's The Road, it has quasi-religious overtones and one very good scene, involving a horde of cannibalistic vampire zombie things being dropped on a town from a helicopter.
It's clear right from the get-go that filmmaker Jim Mickle has absolutely no interest in offering up bursts of either self-referential gimmickry or tension-relieving humor, as Stake Land boasts a consistently dark (literally and figuratively) sensibility that immediately establishes an atmosphere of palpable authenticity and realism (ie the movie comes off as a spin on The Road, except with vampires).
Writer-director Jim Mickle (2007's " Mulberry Street ") has a real artist's eye for detail and texture, and he displays this gift time and again during "Stake Land," a post-apocalyptic drama with the character nuance of 2009's " The Road " and the encroaching threat of 2003's " 28 Days Later ."
There are echoes here of Zombieland (2009) and The Road (2009) but Stake Land seems most closely related to the films of George Romero, especially his recent outings such as Diary of the Dead (2007).
Spare, mournful, and often inert, this vampire-flavored take on “The Road” is more admirable than fulfilling, expelling more effort with atmosphere than story, wasting time with stares when legitimate tension is desperately needed.
There are echoes here, less eloquent, of " The Road ."
The movie’s title and basic premise echo 2009’s Zombieland , but the resemblance ends there: Where Zombieland deftly mixes horror and goofy, pop-culture humor, Stake Land is dead-serious, even when it’s dropping vampires out of helicopters into lockdowns (think medieval armies using trebuchets to lob plague-ridden corpses into enemy territory); George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead is a much more apt comparison.
Apparently, Martin lives in a universe without Dawn of the Dead or any of its rehashes.
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The press materials for Jim Mickle's Stake Land reference author Richard Matheson, but only insofar as it includes a kind of cross between vampires and zombies, as Matheson employed for his great novel I Am Legend.
Immediately upon finishing up with Jim Mickle’s Stake Land, I tweeted something nerdy like “It’s The Road meets The Dark Tower meets Blade meets I Am Legend.
Throw in the work of novelist Richard Matheson (especially I Am Legend) and you pretty much get Jim Mickle's Stake Land, a well-made, but generic and unimaginative horror thriller that does little to differentiate itself from the recent glut of vampire stories on film and television.