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Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant (Film)
Rating: M
Running Time: 109
Country: USA
Director: Paul Weitz
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Salma Hayek, Josh Hutcherson, John C. Reilly
Distributor: Universal
Film Worth: $8.50
Release Date: March 11, 2010
Despite fun performances, this wannabe franchise lacks ambiance
Never has a film screamed its intention to become a franchise more loudly than Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. But it lacks one vital teen franchise ingredient - a well cast lead. It hinges on Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia), a high school kid who gets drawn into a freak show troupe and becomes, as the title telegraphs, a vampire's assistant, and learns to embrace his inner freak.
We first meet Darren at his funeral. He's quite alive, in a coffin, casually playing games on a hand-held gadget. It's a promising start, though things soon get stalled by poor pacing and Massoglia's monotone performance. Yet there are great characters here - chiefly Darren's new boss, Larten Crepsley (a sensationally cast John C. Reilly). Crepsley is one of a new breed of vampires - a good guy, albeit under a hardened exterior. There are, of course, the bad guys, the Vampaneze, who murder their prey rather than just snack like Crepsley, and it's they that complete the set-up for a battle between good and evil.
Reilly is convincing as the two-centuries-old vampire, while Salma Hayek's breaded lady is also brilliant. Willem Dafoe, however, is under par in his brief undeadly appearance. The special effects are mixed. When the vampires travel at lightning speed (or "flit"), it's a nifty piece of blurry tech work, and the weird little creatures that look like Gollum's distant cousins are appropriately ghoulish. But Crepsley's over-grown fuzzy spider, important to the plot, appears to have come from the car accessories department, right next to the fluffy dice. Based on the books by Darren Shan (yes, the same name as the lead character) and helmed by American Pie co-director Paul Weitz, the film has minimal ambiance. Weitz's worst move, however, is the finale - it plays like an overblown ad for a sequel.