Matt Haig’s popular, high-energy 2010 vampire novel comes to the screen with most of its humour and pace drained away as the witty, irreverent book is turned into a dreary, lifeless coming-of-age story that wastes a great cast and, indeed, a great story. The Radleys are a middle-class family living a standard 21st-century existence of barbecues and birthday parties in Whitby. Peter Radley (Damien Lewis) and his wife Helen (Kelly Macdonald) have been (somehow) keeping a secret from their two moody teenage kids, Rowan (Harry Baxendale) and Clara (Bo Bragason) – they’re a family of vampires. When a local youth pushes his luck and tries to assault Clara on the way home from a party, Clara’s vampire nature displays itself, and she tears her attacker’s throat open. Peter and Helen have no choice but to come clean to Clara and Rowan after they’ve removed the evidence of the killing, but their two kids, now aware of their true nature, are suddenly a little harder to keep under the radar. Will enlists the only other “person” who can help him keep his family together – his rakish, louche twin brother and fellow vampire Will. Meanwhile, their neighbour Jared Copleigh (Shaun Parkes), whose son Evan (Jay Lycurgo) is Rowan’s secret crush, is keeping a close eye on the Radleys because there’s something just not right with them…
Unfortunately, there are many things that are just not right with The Radleys. It’s billed as a “horror comedy” – a description that fits the book – but the film version is a largely laugh-free affair. Focussing on Rowan’s obsession with Evan (new to the film) and the fracturing relationship between Peter and Helen turns the film into a rather drab and uninvolving relationship drama. Will’s vampire twin Peter (also Damien Lewis, obviously) is a manic and uncontrollable whirlwind in the book; here, he’s largely just Damien Lewis in a different shirt. Director Euros Lyn, whose TV work (Doctor Who, Sherlock, Black Mirror, Daredevil, amongst many others) is usually fast, vibrant and lively, doesn’t seem to be able to get a handle On this at all, but he’s not helped by an anaemic, joyless script that’s managed to suck all the life out of Matt Haig’s sprightly novel. Not even a bit of last-minute blood-letting is enough to animate this disappointing cadaver of a vampire film.
THE RADLEYS is available now on Sky Cinema in the UK
