Written by Phil O’Shea and directed by Mark James and Phil O’Shea, “Vampire Diary” brings us the story of Vicki and Holly. While Holly is making a documentary, following around a group who calls themselves “The Kindred”, she realizes she is being filmed as well. Vicki is a beautiful and mysterious woman who also carries a videocamera with her at all times. Most of the movie is filmed in this fashion:it’s not found footage, but almost the entire movie is seen from either Holly or Vickie’s handheld cameras. This is mostly interesting, but also takes away from the story when all you can think is, “Really? You’re videotaping this?” during what most people would consider private life moments. No, I’m not talking about sex.
The Kindred are a group of people who live in the underground world of goth music and blood exchanging. The club scenes are reminiscent of the opening of “The Hunger”, which is a nice nostalgic point. Everyone looks the stereotype of a goth vampire , which is exactly what they all claim to be, black hair, black lipstick, white face makeup, leather, piercing etc. As the members of this group slowly start turning up missing, Holly and Vickie are fast becoming a very serious couple. Their chemistry can’t be denied and it looks as if they have something really lovely starting between the two of them. Everything is great until Holly starts putting her friends disappearances together with Vicki’s nighttime absences. Because everyone in this movie films every single thing they do, Vicki simply shows Holly a video as proof that she is, indeed, a real life vampire.
From here on out, the story could have been so very cool, but it descends into a D-level version of “Children Of Men”. See, Vicki is pregnant with a vampire baby; this takes her hunger to a ravenous level and she goes on a city wide murder spree. With the police looking for the perpetrator of these “vampire style killings”, Holly and two other member of The Kindred, make it their mission to keep Vicki fed and safe so she can deliver the vampire baby. What could have been a really interesting and suspenseful tale of aiding Vicki in the birth of her child, is a slow moving, super serious , melancholy, drawn out bore fest. This movie’s greatest downfall is how very serious it takes itself.
-Vampire Diary is currently streaming on Netflix-