Review of Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (2009) by Angela H — 22 Mar 2011

Darren and Steve are best friends. Steve is into vampires while Darren is into spiders. Darren comes from a rich family who wants their son to grow up to be as normal as possible and to follow the strict letter of the foundation system which is to go to college, have a great job, get married and have kids. Just like his parents did. Darren's flaw is that he listens to what his parents tell him to do even to go all out and tell his best friend Steve that he can't be friends with him since his parents don't like him. Steve doesn't come from a rich family. His father died and his mother is a drunk. He hates his life and their is a lot of anger inside of him.

One night Steve and Darren go to a secret showing of a traveling freak show called the Cirque du Freak. They witness an assortment of different freaks from the Wolf Man to the bearded lady to the Snake boy and a vampire named Larten Crepsley who plays with a spider. Steve knows he's a vampire because he's into that kind of stuff and once saw Crepsley's picture in a book about vampires. Darren is in a trance by Crepsley's spider. A beautiful looking thing with several reddish bluish and white color spots all over it. Darren wants this spider so bad that he ends up stealing it from Crepsley. Not a good idea, of course, but Darren has the love of spiders pumping through his veins so he can't help it. (I think he should have been a spider's assistant instead of vampire's, but I digress).

How Darren becomes Crepsley's assistant is when Crepsley's spider bites Steve sending him to the hospital. Darren looks to Crepsley for a cure, but to achieve the antidote he must become a half vampire. He accepts this only to save his friend, but sadly it back fires on him when his friend takes part in joining the evil Mr. Tiny. It's jealousy toward Darren because Steve always wanted to be a vampire.

Crepsley and Darren spend much of the film hanging out at the Cirque du Freak where Darren befriends Rebecca, the monkey girl, and Snake boy who plays the guitar. It was actually quite fun watching the other freaks interact with each other. My only gripe would be that we're not completely introduced to them as characters. They're only like side characters who come in and out of the film from time to time. It was still nice though.

There is an intricate story molding inside the film between two friends, one good, that being Darren, and one evil, that being Steve and how it unfolded wasn't too melodramatic, but it did help some with moving the film along. Much of the center of the film is Crepsley played extremely well by John C. Reilly. He brings an edge to it while never going overboard with it and I was so glad about that. The film does suffer from a big flaw and it's the ending which makes you think that a sequel will come soon, but I haven't heard of anything yet about one and the thought kind makes me wish there was going to be one....so....yeah....that sucks. Hopefully, there will be one....yeah...oh well.

Overall, the tone of the film is in some respects fun to watch if you like vampires, werewolves, monkey girls and freaks then see it! I almost felt like I had stepped into the month of October while watching this film and got one of those nostalgic horror movie marathon flash backs from my yester-years. It would be a good film to watch when that time comes around: Halloween :).