[Editor's Note: This is the first post by new CL film contributor Daphne Hernandez. For reasons unknown, Wordpress swallowed this post last week and I was only able to track it down today. But hey, it's Halloween weekend, and this is flick you might want to see this holiday weekend. So please, check out the review and excuse our tardiness.]
Cashing in on the popularity mass hysteria of vampire lore, Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant falls in line with the myth-deflaters of Twilight. Vampires don’t have to kill humans to survive, bats are just rodents that live in caves, and subspecies do exist. They’re just like you and me, but not like you and me.
Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia) lives a cookie cutter existence best conveyed in a J. Crew catalog. In an alternate universe where everyone wears pastels and drab khakis; he’s the straight-A student your mother will likely trade you in for. After his rebel-without-a-cause best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson) convinces him to ditch class, they get caught and Darren is grounded. In an effort to prove to Steve he’s not the “Mr. Perfect” goody two shoes, they follow a flyer tossed out of an Addams Family-style Studebaker (with a Des-Tiny vanity plate) to the Cirque Du Freak, “The oldest continuing freak show in the Western Hemisphere.”
