Review: STAKE LAND (Blu-Ray)
I approached Jim Mickle's Stake Land with something like suspicion before sitting down to watch his post apocalyptic vampire movie. I think this could be attributed to two things: first, a premise that seemed a little too on-the-nose in terms of allegorical horror. Everyone wants their apocalypse to mean something about something but very few filmmakers are able to actually coherently and consistently say anything worth a damn beyond pointing to the general fractiousness that occurs when the end of the world goes down. My other concern was that Stake Land--based on the premise, at least--wasn't strictly a vampire movie, but more of a zombie movie in vampire drag. Can you blame me: the heroes face the sometimes shambling (sometimes very mobile) dead who want to bite, feed, and infect.
On both counts, my suspicions were essentially unfounded (maybe a little in the second case, but no matter). With the exception of somewhat rough, talking-in-the-direction-of-the-camera performances, this nasty piece of end of the world fiction not only works far better than I thought it would, but actually manages to impress on quite a few occasions with how thoroughly well-realized its world is.
That world, in case you didn't know, is a globe ravaged after the usual outbreak yadda yadda that has people living in fear and--because it's vampires and not zombies--strictly traveling during the day. Our heroes are the simply named Mister (Nick Damici), who's developed a proficiency at killing vampires and a teen named Martin (Connor Paolo), who's being groomed by the older man to be a killer of the dead (meaning the chances for him to grow up to be anything close to adjusted are getting slimmer by the day). The duo make a winding path through the Northwest in an attempt to reach the promised safety in the relatively unpopulated Canada, killing vampires along the way, picking up strangers, and avoiding gangs of entrenched white supremacist religious nuts.
Interesting fact for those of you not in the know: the Pacific Northwest is currently home to one of the United States' most virulent strains of white supremacy (with just a healthy dose of Christian zealotry). What Stake Land gets is that when the end times come, these nuts, the truly committed to the end-of-times will be prepared to circle their wagons and try to make a hell of it for the non-believers and the non-white. Mister--no friend to the white supremacist and not particularly religious besides--becomes a pariah to the faithful here, mostly men who see the plague as a kind of divine intervention to cleanse the world. Like the most dangerous kind of devout person, they ascribe a divine hand in the horrible things that happen to other people as proof of the power of faith (and the weakness of faith in others).
The politics of Stake Land aren't especially subtle or complex and they speak to a certain strain of thinking that has increasingly infected more and more people of late. The actual horror movie part of the thing works so well because it's a piece of survival horror fiction first with the aforementioned sociopolitical elements embedded as part of the landscape. In particular, Mister and company's trek through the mountains is spectacularly harrowing and then strangely peaceful detour in the film that nonetheless adds to the fiction's sense of a story happening at the edge of the end of things.
The performances are for the most part capable. Damici's Mister is a bit more verbose Mad Max (complete with his prized car) and the character would perhaps work better if he had a little less to say. Paolo's Martin comes across as in some state in between shellshock and anxiety--maybe it's in the way he carries himself, but the young actor looks like he's fled one ore more war zones and hasn't quite processed how to react to what he's seen in his short life.
I do appreciate where the story takes Mister and Martin in its final moments. It's an earned bit of grace (I think I'm using the right word here) for characters who wouldn't otherwise be able to find it. This is a surprising thing to find in a horror movie these days, making Stake Land an uncommon success.
Audio and Video
The washed-out color palette is nonetheless well represented on this disc from Dark Sky Films. The visual presentation allows you to pick up every piece of grit, grime and grossness in Mickle's decayed America. As for the audio, expect it to get loud when the vampires are on the prowl as Mickle and co. engineered some interesting sound mixes for the final effects that go into these creatures.
Special Features
2 FEATURE-LENGTH CAST AND CREW COMMENTARIES: Writer/Director Jim Mickle, Writer/Actor Nick Damici, Actor Connor Paolo, Producer/Actor Larry Fessenden, Producer Brent KunkleWriter/Director Jim Mickle, Producers Peter Phok & Adam Folk, Director of Photography Ryan Samul, Sound Designer Graham Reznick, Composer Jeff Grace
GOING FOR THE THROAT: THE MAKING OF STAKE LAND
CHARACTER PREQUELS: 7 SHORT FILMS From Directors Larry Fessenden, Danielle Harris, Glenn McQuaid, JT Petty, Graham Reznick
VIDEO DIARIES By Jim Mickle: PRE-PRODUCTION - STORYBOARDS - VISUAL FX - POST-PRODUCTION
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL PREMIERE AND Q&A
Stake Land is on DVD, Blu-ray and VOD now from Dark Sky Films.
