PLATFORM: NETFLIX | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
The spirit of the 1980s, embodied in fun flicks such as The Goonies, Explorers, Flight of the Navigator etc, and already wonderfully evoked on TV’s Stranger Things, lives again in this charming, boisterous entry-level horror movie designed to introduce younger viewers to the world of the undead without giving them screaming nightmares.
The Bronx is slowly being gentrified; buildings are being bought and businesses bought out by the sinister-sounding Murnau Industries (see what they did there?). A likeable bunch of youngsters, already determined to save their local bodega from closing down, begin to suspect that there’s something very strange in the neighbourhood when people start to disappear. Bobby Carter (Gerald Jones III) witnesses a vampire attacking a local gangster and along with his friends he discovers a nest of bloodsuckers spreading out across the Bronx under the cover of a creeping and beneficent incursion into the district. All they have to do is convince their parents and the authorities that Murnau Industries isn’t quite what it appears to be.
Vampires vs the Bronx, despite its rather silly and lurid title, is a lot of fun, a real family horror film bursting with heart and passion, a familiar story of young friends enjoying a wild adventure with plenty of scares and mild jeopardy but no real blood-curdling horror. For all its vampiric snarling and slightly cheesy 1990s special effects there’s no bloodletting at all in this nippy, sprightly little film that stars a great young cast of unknowns and plays gamely with all the familiar tropes of the vampire genre. A happy Halloween horror treat!
