Review of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009) by Todo L — 06 Mar 2015

I'd like to open in a very simple fashion. Even if you like Ray Stevenson (Rome, King Arthur, Thor, Punisher: War Zone, The Book of Eli, Outpost) and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (of which this film has both) you still will probably not like Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant; because I just so happen to fucking love both Ray Stevenson and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, and I thought this film was absolute rubbish.

Apart from the rip-offliness of the whole thing, as well as its being fuckboring, it just plain doesn't make sense! Willem Dafoe (Daybreakers, Antichrist, Spider-Man 1/2/3, Finding Nemo, eXistenZ, The Boondock Saints) plays... Wait, know what? I don't even know who he fucking plays! I get the feeling he's a vampire as opposed to a Vampineze (Yes, "Vampineze... I mean really!). That's the level of retarded that Vampire's Assistant goes to. They even take Salma Hayek (Bandidas, Frida, Dogma, The Faculty, From Dusk till Dawn) one of the only non-white women I will openly admit to finding very attractive (not a racism thing, just an un-helpable aesthetics thing) and they give her a beard... 'The fuck...

Honestly, if Percy Jackson was a bad-ish rip off of the Harry Potter franchise, then Vampire's Assistant is a fucking woeful rip off of that. I've never seen the main actor in anything before (he doesn't deserve to be named/film-listed) but whoever he is, FUCK THAT GUY! He's an appalling actor that's lucky he brings nothing to the role, when if he'd bothered to own it at all it would have made the film even worse, thankfully (it seems a weird thing to say, I know) he had absolutely NO film-presence. Ray Stevenson as Murlaugh (above) owned his role perfectly, unfortunately it was quite a minor one, and it was in a fucking stupid movie.

There's not much talent going on behind the scenes either, if there was it probably would have made a lick of sense, and not just been a bad lead up to a franchise that will hopefull never eventuate. The effects are bad, it's an egregious and depressingly lame use of the brilliance of Ray Stevenson, all the lead cast are stupid, and I still have no idea what just wasted the last 1:48hr of my life. The only saving grace is getting a geeze at some "freaks" and the use of Australian song Red Right Hand while digging up a grave. And I suppose I've technically seen more boring films in my life, but this is one of the few franchise-hopefuls that I don't care to see go any further, as far as I'm concerned, there's nowhere for it to go, it's that redundant.