The Insatiable

Most vampire movies suck (pun only intended if it makes the statement funny; otherwise, disregard the pun). I like Blade 2, but that’s about it. I walked out of the theatre while watching Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Those Dracula 2000 movies are terrible. IWAV is boring (that’s Interview With A Vampire for those that like to abbreviate the titles of every damn movie so I never know what they’re talking about). So why did I watch a DTV movie called The Insatiable? I’m not sure.

Harry Balbo (Sean Patrick Flanery) is a normal, everyday nobody. He works for a company that sells metal materials and gaskets and flanges. One of his co-workers constantly makes fun of him. Harry never retaliates. He is a genuinely nice guy. He lives alone and acts as the superintendent of his building to supplement his income. His neighbors call him when their garbage disposals break or when their toilets clog.

One night, on his way home, Harry is approached by a homeless guy. The guy is hungry and asks Harry for some money so he can get something to eat. Harry goes to a convenience store and buys the guy a hotdog and a liter of cola. When he returns to the spot where he met the guy, he can’t find him. He calls out to him but receives no reply. Then Harry witnesses an event which will forever change his mundane existence; he sees an extremely hot chick (Charlotte Ayanna) biting the homeless dude’s neck. She proceeds to rip off his head and jumps upward three stories and crashes through a building window. Awesome. Apparently, this wasn’t the first murder in Harry’s neighborhood. The cops tell him that they are investigating other killings with similar MO’s. Harry learns that one of his friends (the clerk at the convenience store) may be one of the vampire’s lovers. He pulls a Shia LeBoofer (Disturbia reference) and spies on his friend one night. The vampire chick sees Harry and scratches him, drawing blood. Now Harry is scared shitless.

Harry does what anyone would do after experiencing a vampiric event; he consults the World Wide Internet. He eventually makes contact with an expert on all things vampire that goes by the screen name Nightstalker. It turns out that Nightstalker (played by Michael Biehn) lives in Harry’s building and Harry meets him when he gets a call to unclog the guy’s shitter. Nightstalker is a crazy vampire-hunting bastard with a vendetta that goes back to his years spent as a soldier in Vietnam. He tells Harry that now that the vampire has smelled Harry’s blood, she will stalk him everywhere he goes until she kills him.

That’s the setup. I won’t spoil the rest of the movie in case you’re interested in seeing it. The Insatiable is written and directed by Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon. This is their first movie, though they have written other projects for TV. The strong point of this film is definitely the writing. The dialogue is funny and realistic and sometimes cheesy (in a good way). Most of the actors, especially Sean Patrick Flanery (why the three names, dude?) are great. The guy who plays the convenience store clerk is kind of annoying, but oh well. Because this is a direct-to-video low-budget feature, the special effects are lacking. The directors compensate for this by using as little CGI as possible. I hate it when low-budget movies use lots of terrible looking CGI (i.e. sci-fi channel movies) when it’s not even necessary or when practical effects would suffice. The Insatiable avoids this pitfall.

My favorite scene in the movie is a foot-chase sequence involving Harry and the vampire. Some of the film is sped up to make it look like they are running really fast. Harry is definitely not a runner; he runs like Johnny Knoxville imitating retards in that movie The Ringer. The vampire runs like the evil terminator from Terminator 2. She rips a door off its hinges. Hilarious.

My main complaint about this movie is the noticeable lack of gore. The kill-shots cut away too quickly. The best gore effect is a dude’s arm getting ripped off (even though the vampire is biting near the elbow and the arm comes off at the shoulder). The scene is great, but it could have used some blood spray to make it really effective. I also would have liked to see some boobage. This is a vampire movie; boobage should be a requirement, especially when said boobage belongs to Charlotte Ayanna.