Hawkeye Reviews: Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
Paul Weitz’s “Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant” is a flat, uninspired attempt at starting up a new series of vampire films a la “Twilight.” It’s interesting that a film that has vampires, a wolfman, a monkey girl, a lizard boy, and several other strange characters could actually be this bland.
While on their way home from school, Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) and his best friend, Steve (Josh Hutcherson) pick up a flier for a freak show that is going to be in town for one night only. They decide to attend the show which is at an old, rundown theater in an abandoned-looking area. It is here that they meet Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly), a vampire who puts on a show with a very large and very poisonous spider. Darren, having a fascination for spiders, steals the spider and brings it to school the next day, where it ends up biting Steve.
Darren returns to the theater to beg Larten for an antidote, which he will give Steve on one condition: Darren must become his assistant. Darren reluctantly agrees, not thinking of the hardship that will come with becoming a vampire (He actually only becomes half-vampire so he can go out in daylight). Meanwhile, we learn that Larten is a vampire of the opinion that vampires don’t need to kill their victims when they feed, but there are other vampires out there who kill just for the fun of it. A war had been waged between the two factions but came to a truce several years ago. However, the factions are inching closer to war yet again.
If that synopsis seemed strange and confusing, that’s because it’s only parts of the plot. To give a full synopsis of what this film tries to squeeze into one movie would take a lot more than two paragraphs, but it’s simply not worth going into further explanation. It’s funny that, while there is a lot of plot to take in, the film never does anything with it and never tries to explain any of it. It just kind of hopes we will pick it up along the way.
There are characters here that serve absolutely no purpose, like Gavner Purl (Willem Dafoe), who pops in to discuss the possibility of war with Larten, Evra (Patrick Fugit), a lizard boy who ends up being Daren’s roommate at the Cirque, and Mr. Tall (Ken Watanabe), the owner of the Cirque who is trying to remain neutral.
Despite having several interesting characters, the film never gives us a chance to get to know them or care about them in any way. If it had allowed any of these characters to develop, then there might have been something here, but it never even allows the main characters to develop, which is rather important when we’re supposed to care about what happens to them.
What the film really needed to do was take all that downtime it has throughout where nothing at all is happening and fill in the plot holes that continually formed. We meet the main evil enemy of the Cirque, Mr. Tiny (Michael Cerveris), who wants to bring on this war between the two groups of vampires, but never explains why. My best guess boils down to him enjoying watching people fight, as we see in the final act of the film, but how is this benefiting the side he supports?
Then there are the two best friends, Darren and Steve, who end up on opposing sides, but why does it end up like this? Because the story demands it. There is no logical reason for Steve to be on the evil side. In fact, he’s given a chance to stay with Darren at the end, but refuses, claiming that it is “too late.” Perhaps the writers figured out that it was “too late” to avoid this plot hole at this point.
The performances here left much to be desired. The two kids give incredibly bland performances. It’s as if they had never acted before, though IMDB says differently. Reilly, Watanabe, and Dafoe do what they can with their roles, but they just aren’t given anything worthy of their talents and end up just looking bored the entire time they are onscreen.
This film is based on a series of books by Darren Shan. With the ambiguous ending of the film, the studio was obviously hoping to start a new series, but due to its complete failure at the box office, it looks like “Cirque du Freak” is going to go the way of “The Golden Compass” (which is a much better film than this). In other words, I wouldn’t expect a sequel…..ever.
2/4 stars.
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