BLOODSUCKING BASTARDS Review

Release Date: September 4, 2015 (Limited and VOD)
Director: Brian James O’Connell
MPAA Rating: NR
Run Time: 86 Minutes

Comedies poking fun at the drudgery that is an office job are always ones that have tickled my fancy since I first saw Office Space back in 1999. Since then, we’ve seen shows like The Office and Workaholics pop up, each brandishing their own spin on the monotony that is cubicle life. Brian James O’Connell’s Bloodsucking Bastards takes this formula and adds in vampires to mix things up a bit, resulting in a slightly enjoyable, but fleeting, endeavor.

Fran Kranz plays the office goodie-goodie, Evan, his company’s acting sales manager who is trying his damnedest to get the “acting” moniker removed from his title. Unfortunately, his boss, played by Joel Murray, instead brings in a new manager, a college nemesis of Evan’s named Max (Pedro Pascal), who also happens to be a vampire.

Max begins turning the office workers into vampires one by one in order to increase their productivity and help boost sales for the company, because…vampires. Now Evan must kill all the creatures of the night with the help of his slacker best friend, Tim (Joey Kern); his sort-of girlfriend, Amanda (Emma Fitzpatrick); and the building’s security guard, Frank (Marshall Givens).

As far as horror-comedies go, Bloodsucking Bastards works well enough. It’s competently directed and features a number of humorous lines of dialogue, but there’s really not much to say beyond that. Kranz plays the lovable everyman character like a pro at this point, so his character was likable and funny, as was Kern’s character, who provided the bulk of the laughs.

The premise behind the film in and of itself is humorous as well – the idea of bringing in a vampire to turn all the employees into bloodsucking workaholics is an interesting concept, even if the logic behind it is a bit shaky.

Like HBO’s True Blood, when the vampires in Bloodsucking Bastards get killed, they explode into a geyser of blood and viscera, so needless to say, there are gallons of blood in this movie. The effects work is solid and to my eye looked mostly practical, opting for the tried-and-true Karo Syrup method over digitally adding the carnage, which always gets bonus points from me.

Unfortunately, there’s just not much else to say about this film. It’s not a bad movie by any stretch, but there isn’t anything here we haven’t seen before. It’s moderately entertaining and is good for a few laughs, but the generic plot and characters prevent it from having any kind of lasting power. If you’re in the mood for a decent horror-comedy you might want to give this one a look; just don’t expect to remember much of it after a week or so.