Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant [HD]

Best Horror Comedy of 2009
Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant took me by surprise more than any other movie last year, and I couldn't wait for it to come out on Blu Ray. Horror comedies, in my opinion, are hard to pull off because the director is trying to serve two audiences at the same time. The Vampire's Assistant pulls this off very well as it simultaneously creates a dark, moody atmosphere while never letting things get too serious.
You can read about the story in the description, so I won't get into detail about plot elements. The main story moved along at a good pace with never really any down-time or uneccesary scenes. If anything the movie is probably a little on the short side. This film, I believe would have been more well received if some of the characters and plot points were fleshed out a little more. There is simply too much story to cram into just under two hours. Despite the time constraints the cast does an excellent job of creating a dark atmosphere, all centered around the...

A fun teenage vampire flick...
I will preface my review of this movie by saying that I much prefer Blade, From Dusk til Dawn and Underworld type vampire flicks that all have tons of action, violence and gore in them. Whenever you get into the PG-13 world you are going to get a much more friendly and watered down film with less brutality, violence and language. Reality and financing dictates that the movie studios have to appeal to a broader audience when possible to make enough money to allow the films I mentioned previously.

I am not familiar with the book that this movie is based upon. That being said this was a fun 'teen oriented' vampire movie with no significant violence or gore. This is a PG-13 (unfortunately) flick; you know it's going to be in the vanilla spectrum so don't expect Blade or Underworld. The CGI animation and coloring of John C. Reilly's pet spider was amazing, but then again any quality CGI animation done nowadays should be and usually is amazing. The makeup effects, set design and...

Freak du Film
Cirque du Freak is based on the first trilogy of The Saga of Darren Shan, a set of twelve books (four trilogies) by the Irish writer Darren O'Shaughnessy (pen name: Darren Shan, just like his hero's). These teen/young adult oriented novels have a worldwide following and been translated to over 25 languages.

Darren is a teen with a charmed life: popular, smart, from an upper class family, he is destined for a productive and orderly life of college-job-family. This order however is disrupted one night, when, after some prodding from his troubled best friend Steve, Darren attends a late night performance of Cirque du Freak. When Darren's actions put Steve's life in danger, a vampire performer from Cirque du Freak is the only one with the power to save the young man. And so, Darren strikes a deal: in exchange for his friend's life, Darren will abandon his family and become the vampire's assistant; a half vampire himself. Unbeknownst to him, a war has been brewing between the...

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