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Film: Embrace of the Vampire
Year: 2013
Director: Carl Bessai
Writer: Andrew C. Erin and Sheldon Roper
Starring: Sharon Hinnendael, Kaniehtiio Horn and C.C. Sheffield
Review:
This film begins in the 1700s in Eastern Europe. A gypsy woman enters a house where a woman is being held down. There is a ritual being done and they are hurried by something. They finish and everyone flees the room. A vampire enters and a man steps in front of her, saving everyone else.
We shift to now and we see a young woman arrive at college. She is played by Sharon Hinnendael. She enters her room and meets her roommate, who is played by Kaniehtiio Horn. They talk and both know a little bit about each other from something the school sends them. We learn that Hinnendael has no parents, both are dead. She is from an all-girl Catholic school, she has been given a scholarship that is tough to earn and she is a really good fencer. She also has a job interview at a local coffee shop. All Horn has to say is that she knows a girl who is a fencer as well and she knows the manager of the coffee shop.
Hinnendael on the way to her interview stops to look in the window of an occult shop. A necklace catches her eye and she notices the shop owner staring at her. The shop owner is played by Keegan Connor Tracy.
The manager at the coffee shop is played by Ryan Kennedy. He hires her and there is some attraction between the two of them. Hinnendael goes to another interview with a doctor at the school. He is played by Robert Moloney and he tells Hinnendael to close the blinds, he says because he has just had laser eye surgery. He seems attracted to her too and tells her that he wants her to succeed.
Hinnendael then meets one of her professors as well as the school’s new fencing teacher; he is played by Victor Webster. There seems to be some kind of attraction here as well.
Back at her room, Hinnendael meets her teammate and Horn’s friend; she is played by C.C. Sheffield. Sheffield is not very nice to Hinnendael and is quite rude. Horn and she go out, leaving Hinnendael alone.
Sheffield makes fun of Horn for trying to be friends with her, but Horn legitimately wants to be friends with her.
From the beginning, Hinnendael is acting funny. She sees things that aren’t really there. She isn’t sure what is real and what isn’t. She sleepwalks and wakes up in weird places. She slowly goes crazy and she tries to hold it together. She has a lot on her plate and that makes it worse.
Hinnendael goes to class and thinks she sees one her classmates cutting his forearm with his pen. She makes a small scene, but everything goes on like normal. Moloney watches over her from a staircase.
In the women’s locker room before practice, Hinnendael meets her teammates. One of them is the captain played by Olivia Cheng. She is meaner than the rest to her, mostly because she has put her time in and feels threatened. Despite that, Hinnendael has a great practice and shows up the two she goes against.
After some more hallucinations and an odd meeting with Tracy, Hinnendael is awakes in the middle of the night by the upperclassmen on the fencing team. They are being hazed and we learn that Hinnendael has a weird blood disease. Because of it she doesn’t drink, but she is forced to. She ends up blacking out and fooling around with one of her teammates, she is played by Chelsey Reist.
Hinnendael’s life seems to be spiraling out of control. Will she be able to hold on? One night when she is walking home, a man is murdered by something that moves too fast to be human. Is there a vampire or another creature of the night stalking her? With everyone being attracted to her, what will she decide to do? What does Tracy know about Hinnendael?
I have to say that there wasn’t much that was good about this film. The best part of this is the nudity and that is sad to say. Most every female character in this film is in their underwear at one point and everyone is pretty much topless at some point as well. There is a good lesbian scene and a pretty messed up love story that involves Hinnendael with multiple people. The film tries to make you think that it might be Hinnendael going crazy, but we know there was a vampire in the beginning and that one would have to be in the end or the beginning makes no sense.
Most of this film is just bad. The acting isn’t very good. Characters do a lot of things that don’t make a lot of sense for no reason. They make decisions very rashly and everyone seems to believe whatever is told to them. The story isn’t very good either. They introduce elements and have no bearings for a long time. It just isn’t very cohesive.
I wouldn’t recommend seeing this one unless you want to see some pretty good looking women naked. The story is weak, the acting is poor and without the nudity, this movie would have been rated even lower. This is just boring and not very well made. The monster of the film doesn’t appear until about 20 minutes left and that was quite weak as well. Not really worth your time or a viewing.
My Rating: 4 out of 10