Jim Mickle, you put Zombies in my Vampire movie, wait, you put Vampires in my Zombie movie.
Stake Land was well deserving of the TIFF Midnight Madness Audience Choice Award. And right here in trailer inter-title, is ScreenAnarchy lord and master, Todd Brown, also proclaiming it the best American Film of 2010 (when it was on the fest circuit.) Indeed,
Stake Land is a thoughtful and intense post-apocalyptic wild-west inflected road-movie which throws down the gauntlet on who should be writing and directing
The Walking Dead if they wish things to improve in that series. There is badassery and genre mayhem to spare (there is a great John Carpenter vibe that Carpenter himself can't seem to manage these days) leavened with a hint of the higher production values afforded the likes of John Hillcoat and Terrence Malick (whose elegiac tone gets a few slight nods here, even though Mickle's film is not aiming for that headspace!) And this trailer makes a bold showcase for the films tone and humour. Along with the director's and co-writer's (Nick Damici doing double duty as lead vampire killer) low-budget debut film,
Mulberry Street, both are unabashedly genre efforts, but inject a lot of wit, style, brains and heart in the proceedings.