Mark Reviews Movies: NIGHT TEETH

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 19, 2021

A secret realm of vampires exists just out of sight in Night Teeth, which gives us an overly generic world of blood-sucking fiends and a plot to match it. Screenwriter Brent Dillon came up with a single and fairly familiar idea, and another doesn't arrive until the movie's sequel-establishing epilogue.

Here are the basics: About 100 years ago or so, the vampires and humans of Los Angeles made a pact for peace. The vampires would live and go about their business in one neighborhood, and a group of vampire hunters or concerned citizens—or whatever the other side is actually supposed to be—wouldn't interfere, unless the vampires broke their side of the bargain. Most of the deal has to do with vampires not feeing on the unwilling, which raises a few logistical questions about supply and demand, in terms of just how many vampires exist in this world (The answer, obviously, is however many need to for foes and obstacles to come about in the plot) and how many humans would be willing to become donors for their hunger.

Don't ask such questions, because Dillon and director Adam Randall don't care to provide the answers, come up with any specific details, or even hint at some kind of logical foundation for any of this. There are vampires and humans in this city, living together in some kind of harmony. Since that's the only thing necessary for this story to exist, it's all that the movie offers.

The rest of the plot is just as vague and unconsidered. The current head of keeping the vampires in check—or at least that's what his role seems to be—is Jay (Raúl Castillo). His girlfriend is captured and he is being hunted by Victor (Alfie Allen), a vampire with a plan to destroy his human and vampire competition in a single night.

Enforcing the bargain between humans and vampires must not pay well, because Jay is also a chauffeur. Since he's currently in hiding and/or busy preparing for a battle against Victor, Jay decides to let his younger brother Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), a college student with dreams of becoming a musician, take his gig for that night. Despite the danger surrounding him and his supposed knowledge of all things in the vampire underworld, Jay insists that Benny pretend to be him and doesn't realize that his younger brother has been hired to drive two vampires around town. It's little wonder Jay has to have a side job, considering what a poor excuse for a vampire keeper-in-check or whatever he is.

Those vampires are Blaire (Debby Ryan), who amiably jokes and later flirts with Benny (thereby ending her characterization and purpose in this tale), and Zoe (Lucy Fry), who isn't so nice. Benny spends the rest of the night driving the two to various and variously bland locales—a fancy mansion, an upscale hotel, a neon-drenched nightclub, a dive bar. At some point, after seeing the two women sucking the blood out of a pair of rather eager guys, Benny realizes they're vampires and servants of Victor, killing off vampire and human alike in order for the megalomaniac to take control of the city.

It's not much of a plot, but the movie still is all plot. There's little to no care for making the world of vampires, their relationship with humans, or the role of human hunters/enforcers comprehensible or even vaguely interesting. The trio just goes from place to dull place, as Benny learns what the two vampires are up to and the broadest details of their world (amulets and crooked cops and enough blood from some source for them to enjoy cocktails made of the stuff).

An action sequence or two erupt along a couple of stops, although such scenes are both visually and narratively messy, as smoking crossbow bolts—from an entirely different team of even less-developed vampire hunters—fill up the screen. Victor does some of the elimination work on his own, while also trying to get at Jay, who's hunting the vampire. Benny and Blaire have a couple of quieter scenes together, which feel contrived under the circumstances and, while Blaire hints at a deep melancholy underpinning her vampiric existence, don't really give us a sense of these characters beyond the chase in which they're caught.

Night Teeth does possess a certain, admirable momentum in its almost non-stop, nighttime adventure. It's not enough of a distraction from how little thought or care went into developing this world, this story, and these characters.

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