Pulpmovies Reviews

Vampire hunter, Cora Shelby (Andrea Bertola) returns home – covered in blood - after her first successful kill. However, once home, she discovers that she wasn’t as safe as she thought she was…

And that – on the face of it, at least – is the end of Cora. But not, of course, the end of the film.

Cora, it turns out, was not working alone, but was part of a group of vampire hunters led by Margot Gallo (Shawna Bermender). What’s more, Cora had a list, naming the vampires active in her native New York. And now Margot’s team want to get hold of this list.

Of course, the other side, led by 20s bootlegger turned vampire, Anthony Garring (Frank Franconeri), also wants the list – and they certainly don’t want Monica’s vampire hunters to lay their hands on it. And it is around the hunt for this list that much of Silver Night turns.

There are some interesting ideas – and several effective scenes – in Silver Night. The film draws parallels between illegal drugs and prohibition, with Garring moving easily from one form of bootlegging to another – which could be seen as a comment on the whole “war on drugs”.

The film also manages to draw some parallels between addiction and vampirism as well as being the first film – to my knowledge – to consider vampire nutrition.

Unfortunately, none of these ideas are really developed to the extent that they could be and the film tends to fall back onto standard vampire tropes every time things start to get interesting.

It’s a shame since there is some very strong acting in the film – especially on the part of Frank Franconeri who does an excellent job of getting across the pain and self-disgust that comes with vampirism. But, without a central myth to hold the script together, the plotting starts to flit between treating the vampires with Anne Rice type sympathy and seeing them as the soulless eating machines describe by Donlevy (Vernon Gravdal), the film’s resident expert on all things vampiric.

Indeed, there is a whole subplot involving Cora and her former boyfriend and fellow vampire hunter, David (Greg Dashkin), which promises to be ambiguous and a source of uncertainty but proves to be little more a scripting convenience.

And this brings me to my last – and most minor - gripe.

There are references in the film to New York having become a “New York has become a hunting ground for a pack of serial killers.”

Linking the vampires to serial killers – seems to be becoming a bit of a cliché. On one hand, it does allow the filmmakers to get around the ‘large numbers of unexplained deaths’… but I’m not convinced it’s really necessary. Vampire movies are – by their nature – fantasy films. As such, it’s probably better to keep the audience’s attention diverted from the discrepancies than trying to explain them.

And, although the serial killer plotline is referred to, it isn’t used – we don’t any additional police and it doesn’t appear to cause any problems for either the vampires or the hunters. So it would probably have been better to not bring the audience’s attention to the inconsistencies that are an inevitable part of any vampire – or fantastic – film.

Overall, there are some very interesting ideas in Silver Night and writer/director Glenn Andreiev does show an awful lot of potential. And I think that he will make some very good and very original films in the future.

Unfortunately, in the case of Silver Night, the lack of certainty as to what is the underlying vampire myth for the film ultimately undermines it.

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