Umbrage: The First Vampire is set in England & starts as antiques dealer Jacob (Doug Bradley) & his pregnant wife Lauren (Grace Vallorani) along with their stepdaughter Rachel (Rita Rammani) arrive at their new home, an old farmhouse located deep in the countryside. Meanwhile nearby in the woods two friends Stanley (James Fisher) & Travis (Scott North) drink together round their camp fire, then out of the darkness of the night steps an attractive young woman named Lilith (Natalia Celino) & flirts with the two men & manages to convince Travis to follow into the woods, Stanley hears a scream & finds his friend Travis with his penis cut off & Lilith claiming something from the shadows was responsible. Trying to find help the two see Jacob's farmhouse & ask for help but Lilith is not as she seems & a tall man in a hat named Phelan (Jonnie Hurn) turns up & is suspected of killing Travis but he has in fact come to fight evil but will he be able to convince anyone?
This British production was edited, written, co-produced & directed by Drew Cullingham & was originally called Umbrage but was probably changed by the distributors because that's a crap title that means nothing & they thought the chance to include the word Vampire in the title might be beneficial as Vampires are quite hot at the moment with the likes of the Twilight films. Anyway I can't say that I thought this was particularly good, I suppose it tries to do something different with the Vampire tale but still ends up being generic & the real fatal blow is that it's just too dull & boring. Umbrage: The Last vampire just seems to take ages to get going & then goes nowhere in particular, sure I can see that the script tries to create some sort of back-story to both it's main Vampire villain & the main Vampire hunter but I couldn't say I cared for either & there's also something about an ancient mirror that went completely over my head. Even though Umbrage: The Last vampire lasts for 90 odd minutes the closing credits last for 9 of those minutes but even at 80 minutes actual film time was too much for me, the flashbacks & mythical nonsense about the Devil, God & Adam and Eve is just forgettable & doesn't really fit in with the rest of the film which feels like some cheap teen Vampire film as various human character's are menaced by a Vampire & some hunter or other comes along to save them. This is uninspiring stuff although you do get the impression that makers tried & in fact probably tried too hard to do too much & cram various things in without ever knowing how to combine them together in a watchable & entertaining narrative. Not much of any note happens & I expect to have completely forgotten about it by tomorrow.
There isn't even any decent gore on show, there's a bit of blood & a shot of a severed penis (coincidently this is the second film in a row which has included close-up shots of a severed penis after I watched the entertainingly stupendous Piranha 3DD (2012) not that I actively seek out films featuring severed cock's though) but not much else. There's a bit of nudity at the end as the leading actress proves that she has ample sized breast's. The film takes itself extremely seriously apart from one or two out of place one-liners & joking reference's to other films & there's also clear homages to the likes of An American Werewolf in London (1981). There's noting overly scary or suspenseful here, it's all rather forgettable.
The IMDb says this had a budget of about $3,000,000 which I can't believe for a second, this looks a lot lower budgeted than that. Filmed here in London in England this at least looks competent. The Western style music is terrible & the songs are embarrassingly bad, I dare anyone to try & sit through the last five minutes as Phelan & Rachel take what seems like forever to walk along a road & not want to scream because of the horrible song on the soundtrack which is quite frankly scarier than anything else in the film. The acting is alright but nothing else, yeah Doug Bradley played Pinhead in the Hellraiser films but so what?
Umbrage: The First Vampire is a bit of a boring mess that has ambition but no way of realising it, it's just a bland, predictable & forgettable low budget horror of no note whatsoever. I will (hopefully) have forgotten all about this within a couple of days.
This British production was edited, written, co-produced & directed by Drew Cullingham & was originally called Umbrage but was probably changed by the distributors because that's a crap title that means nothing & they thought the chance to include the word Vampire in the title might be beneficial as Vampires are quite hot at the moment with the likes of the Twilight films. Anyway I can't say that I thought this was particularly good, I suppose it tries to do something different with the Vampire tale but still ends up being generic & the real fatal blow is that it's just too dull & boring. Umbrage: The Last vampire just seems to take ages to get going & then goes nowhere in particular, sure I can see that the script tries to create some sort of back-story to both it's main Vampire villain & the main Vampire hunter but I couldn't say I cared for either & there's also something about an ancient mirror that went completely over my head. Even though Umbrage: The Last vampire lasts for 90 odd minutes the closing credits last for 9 of those minutes but even at 80 minutes actual film time was too much for me, the flashbacks & mythical nonsense about the Devil, God & Adam and Eve is just forgettable & doesn't really fit in with the rest of the film which feels like some cheap teen Vampire film as various human character's are menaced by a Vampire & some hunter or other comes along to save them. This is uninspiring stuff although you do get the impression that makers tried & in fact probably tried too hard to do too much & cram various things in without ever knowing how to combine them together in a watchable & entertaining narrative. Not much of any note happens & I expect to have completely forgotten about it by tomorrow.
There isn't even any decent gore on show, there's a bit of blood & a shot of a severed penis (coincidently this is the second film in a row which has included close-up shots of a severed penis after I watched the entertainingly stupendous Piranha 3DD (2012) not that I actively seek out films featuring severed cock's though) but not much else. There's a bit of nudity at the end as the leading actress proves that she has ample sized breast's. The film takes itself extremely seriously apart from one or two out of place one-liners & joking reference's to other films & there's also clear homages to the likes of An American Werewolf in London (1981). There's noting overly scary or suspenseful here, it's all rather forgettable.
The IMDb says this had a budget of about $3,000,000 which I can't believe for a second, this looks a lot lower budgeted than that. Filmed here in London in England this at least looks competent. The Western style music is terrible & the songs are embarrassingly bad, I dare anyone to try & sit through the last five minutes as Phelan & Rachel take what seems like forever to walk along a road & not want to scream because of the horrible song on the soundtrack which is quite frankly scarier than anything else in the film. The acting is alright but nothing else, yeah Doug Bradley played Pinhead in the Hellraiser films but so what?
Umbrage: The First Vampire is a bit of a boring mess that has ambition but no way of realising it, it's just a bland, predictable & forgettable low budget horror of no note whatsoever. I will (hopefully) have forgotten all about this within a couple of days.