Stake Land (2010)

Okay, here's a tricky one. Stake Land pretty much narrates the journey of Martin, a simple boy that just lost his family, and Mister, a rogue vampire hunter and badass, to the New Eden supposedly located north towards Canada. A vampire epidemic has brought the world to a complete disaster and now the few survivors of the V-Apocalypse struggle to stay alive from both the vampires during the night and a group of religious extremists during the day.

During the first ten minutes of the film, we're illustrated with Mister's complete ass-kicking ability to kill as he saves Martin from the vampire that decided to pick the boy's family for a nice midnight snack. Horror fans wouldn't let me lie about how delightful it is to see a vampire that doesn't look like the latest male top model in vogue. Stake Land vamps are a good mix between rotten and more rotten.

We start off with the right foot: blood, a little bit of gore and ass-kicking. Unfortunately, that's one of the three or less kicks you'll get from this film. In my opinion, the movie falls flat trying to make us all notice how sad and shitty it is to be a survivor of such event. Mister takes upon his personal task to train Martin into a badass hunter as they travel through a couple of human reserves, save one or two lives, kill a couple of religious extremists, add up to Mister's fang collection, become hostages to the religious extremists, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for scenic, pseudo-deep post-apocalyptic movies where everything's sulky and shitty. But the pacing and storytelling of this film is something you'd expect from a movie like The Road and not from one titled Stake Land, where the clichéd main character, evil guy and plot twists seem to have been written either by a beefy thirteen year old kid or worse, M. Night Shyamalan.

(Insert clichéd dialog about The Valley of the Shadow of Death here.)

Somewhere along the way, Mister and the kid end up picking up a pregnant girl, an old nun and a former marine. We are forced to these dull characters for too long just so they could be disposed in a matter of seconds. Still, Stake Land is a good movie to kill time with. They really put an effort to characterize their vampires and the world surrounding the almost lacking story is admirably developed.
 

Yes. It's a motherfucking train barricade.

What to expect?
Lot's of scenic sequences, a little blood every now & then, bright day shots & extremely dark night shots, a whole lot of nothing topped off with a plump little cherry of more uneventfulness. Oh, and this:

Who's been naughty?

Hellnation's Rating: 4.5/10