Movie Review - Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

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Is your child too old for Goosebumps but not quite ready for the sexual tension and romanticized domestic abuse metaphors of Twilight?  Then perhaps Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is for you…because I have no idea who else it could conceivably be for.  Chris Massoglia stars at Darren Shan a quiet and bookish adolescent.  He is best friends with Steve (Josh Hutcherson) a young adult of a slightly more trouble-making variety.  When the two receive a flyer touting a touring freak show (Cirque du Freak) they immediately decide to attend.  (Hooray for grass roots marketing!)  Upon witnessing the show, they quickly realize they’re in the presence of something a bit more “other worldly” than originally expected.  Steve, who’s obsessed with vampires, instantly recognizes the show’s final performer as the “famous” vampire Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly).  He instantly wants to abandon his humdrum life and become a vampire.  However, through a serious of machinations which are as mundane as they are unmemorable, it’s Darren that becomes a (partial) vampire thereby leaving Steve bitter and unfulfilled.

I don’t think I’ve seen a movie position itself for a sequel this unabashedly since Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (that’s their subtitle, by the way).  The movie spends so much time attempting to create a franchise that it forgets to create an interesting film.  Characters come and go: Mr. Tall (Ken Watanabe), Madame Truska (Salma Hayek), Alexander Ribs (Orlando Jones), Gavner Purl (Willem Dafoe), Corma Limbs (Jane Krakowski).  Judging by the casting, they’re clearly meant to be of some importance further down the line.  But all we get here are head-scratching cameos that leave us wondering why such well known actors were only given five lines of dialog.   The entire movie feels like ninety-minutes of prologue.  

There are a few moments that show us what might have been.  Vampires in this world don’t kill; they merely knock their victims unconscious and take a sip.  (Apparently even the undead have “gone green” and now find themselves concerned with “sustainability”.)  Of course, this is merely a plot device designed to allow viewers to like vampires.  But it does present a somewhat interesting take on the genre as Vampires are locked in battle with “Vampanese”, vampires who are still willing to kill in order to feed.  I have no idea why the non-killing offshoots were allowed to keep the name “vampire” though.  That’d be like Meadowlark Lemon leaving the Harlem Globetrotters and taking the name with him.  Nevertheless, it at least adds a new wrinkle vampire lore.

If the film has one redeeming quality, it’s the performance of John C. Reilly.  He gives the character of Crepsley a tired, world-weary delivery that accounts for every laugh that the film manages to muster (not counting the substandard special effects, that is).  Crepsley, as a vampire, is very much aware of what people perceive vampires to be.  His level of self-awareness was played to great comic effect and left me wishing he was in a different/better movie. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being Dracula (1931) and 1 being Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant gets a 4.

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