Director: Ashley Cahill
Release date: 2025
Contains spoilers
Combining vampires and the American Civil War has been done before but it is a great setting and this could have been a good budget film bar a glaring CGI issue (though, to be fair, it looked like a lot of practical effects around blood and gunfire). In this we take our point of view from Union soldiers, and the vampires are Confederates. What makes this more interesting was that it focused on African American Union soldiers.
 |
| Malcolm Goodwin as Barabas |
It starts, however, in a dream – or nightmare – as main character Barabas (Malcolm Goodwin,
True Blood) relives a moment with his pregnant wife, when they were both slaves, being intercepted by slave owner Quantrill (
Michael Madsen) who punishes them both by whipping her, though Barabas begs to be the one punished. He is later told that she and the unborn baby died. He wakes in a cell. Now, a point around this. Barabas is by far the most rounded character, with much back story, but, for some reason, why the (now) Union soldier ended up in the stockade is so glossed over as to be missing, which was frustrating.
 |
| the squad |
Nevertheless, he is taken from the cell to see the commanding officers and there General Craven (Jeff Daniel Phillips,
Son of Darkness: To Die For II,
Freaks of Nature &
The Munsters) gives him two options; on the one hand he could take a squad to a heavily fortified Confederate fort with giant cannons and destroy it – a suicide mission but he’d get a pardon and forty acres and a mule if they succeed and survive – and on the other, be executed. The General, incidentally, came over just as racist as the Confederates we meet later.
 |
| Triana Browne as Tsula |
Given the Hobson’s Choice, and with the warning that if he or any of his men ran they’d be hunted down, he takes his squad out. The squad consists of Abe (Bryan Taronn Jones), Washington (Okea Eme-Akwari), Cuffy (Furly Mac), Stevens (Randall J. Bacon,
Don’t Suck) and Blunt (Davonte Burse). None of the squad are particularly built up as characters, though Eme-Akwari admirably builds up Washington through sheer charisma, indeed some of the characters are simply disposable. They reach a homestead, first of all, that seems to be the subject of a massacre, with only a Native American, Tsula (Triana Browne), who had come to trade, and a Black woman (presumably a slave) surviving. The only help Barabas gives is to point them to their lines and give them a pistol. The Black woman warns them of the woods, says to stay indoors at night (an odd suggestion in the wilderness) and watch the trees. Tsula will end up with the squad later.
 |
| enemy captured |
They next come across a Confederate patrol. They capture one, are captured in turn and Barabas is able to save Cuffy from a lynching – during which they manage to kill the confederates. Or do they? Sharp-eyed viewers will have noted that one of them, when we first met him, with having a pee and his urine was red. The characters believe them dead, at least, but the altercation has seen Stevens killed and Blunt blinded – and so Barabas shoots him (presumably as a mercy as they would have to leave him, but more so underlining the grim determination he has to get the job done and get his reward). Eventually they reach the fort but they are seriously low on numbers having lost another man to “something” in the trees. It is here that the film lost me.
 |
| the fort.... or castle |
We see the fort, and it looks like a stone, European style castle (and clearly just an image). The practical set looks like a wooden fort recreation they shot in. There are wooden fences to scale, rather than stone walls, There is a lot of over-lit/exposed photography to try to hide the joins shots to disguise that they weren’t filming in a castle and then we are in a wood-built area and the transition jolts. The guns are huge, but clearly mock ups and they had no real texture to them. It is bad CGI (with some physical modelling it appears, for up close moments as dynamite is laid). The fort also has a rock crypt with coffins…
 |
| stake |
Because, yes, vampires and you can bet your bottom dollar than slave owner Quantrill is involved because firstly that gives Barabas more motivation but mostly because if you’ve paid for Michael Madsen (this was one of his last films before he sadly passed) you may as well get your money's worth. Tsula suggests that they are nostradu, evil spirits that came on the boats with the white man and whose totem is the bat. They must hunt by night and drink blood. They prefer the name Nosferatu, they are weakened by the sun, must be killed by a stake to the heart (wooden it seems, as a blade fails), do not reflect and can become bats and mist (it seems). Tsula has found a flower, she described as an Eastern Rosebud – which wouldn't be the native name – and Abe said came from a Judas Tree, its vernacular name. Tsula recognises it as a plant that can ward off evil and later uses it to stop someone who is bitten from turning (as it is a one bite turns film).
 |
| Michael Madsen as Quantrill |
Despite the best efforts of Malcolm Goodwin and Okea Eme-Akwari, despite decent wilderness locations and despite some decent practical effects, I couldn’t get past the cgi and locational mishmash. I was jarred from the film. It wasn’t perfect in other respects – paper thin characters (bar Barabas), a missed opportunity with the "at night in the woods" section, as it could have been used to really build a tension but just didn’t, but these things I could have forgiven as the good outweighed the bad – until they got to the fort.
4 out of 10 actually feels generous given how much the main issue smashed suspension of belief. A shame.
The imdb page is
here.
On Demand @ Amazon US
On Demand @ Amazon UK
