STAKE LAND (2010)

“In a world where America falls to vampires, two hunters stand between chaos and justice – that world is STAKE LAND.” Or one can image some such 1980s dramatic voice over before the exciting montage of speeding cars, tiger roaring vampires, blood squirting out from flame flickering shadow, the silhouette hip grinding of a dancing girl, then the screeching tire shot gun blast echoing in the empty, snow falling woods.

And none of those quick flash images would be wrong, since many of them are in the movie. But what that would fail to portray is the true horrific atmosphere STAKE LAND manages to scrape off the sides of the zombiepocalypse vampire diary sarcophagus.

The story is familiar, a young boy is accidently rescued by a mumbly stranger seconds after that boy’s family is eaten by a vampire. The older stranger adopts the young boy, trains him in the art of hunting and slaying vampires, as they meander toward the promised land of New Eden. Along the way, they encounter tribes of humans more savage and frightening than the supernatural monsters that hunt in the night. The boy slowly leans toward maturity and a family is briefly created from hitchhiking stragglers and other orphaned survivors.

Yawningly familiar, right?

Except STAKE LAND is a better film than its reduced plot implies. For instance, the flashback scene where the young boy, Martin, races to chase the barking dog and narrowly escapes the vampire attack that claims his family is contrived. But the payoff introduction to the vampire monsters establishes a brutal and terrifying tone for the rest of the movie. It is an inventive and effective scene, one of many to come.

I am reminded of a recent interview with THE WALKING DEAD’s creator, Robert Kirkman, where he admits that he would not want to survive any sort of zombie invasion because such an event would turn the world into one giant prison. STAKE LAND explores this brilliantly though radio static broken by announcements from the pockets of humanity, what the movie calls “lockdowns,” that have banded together in de facto tribes. Some are just trying safety in numbers, maintaining a community the best they can. While others have gone insanely cryptomessianic subtly worshiping the vampires while adhering to an Aryan Nation Christian militia – like the movie’s real big bads, The Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood and our heroes cross swords several times, leading to the most effective menace in the movie. Radio broadcasts, roadblocks, and graffiti all proclaim the deadly intention of the Brotherhood to eek out their revenge upon the hunters. Leading to the most brilliant scene in STAKE LAND which involves a helicopter and a lot of squirting blood.

But the Brotherhood, also, provides the silliest and most unfortunate plot engine of the last third of the film. While our intrepid band moves through the elevated wilderness among the bare straight trees of winter and the gentle wisps of falling snow, the audience feels the edge of a lost civilization, the slump into a silent comfort zone that is actually a more perilous frontier. I am not sure we needed the final standoff, since it seemed tacked on and unnecessarily unexplainable in a movie that had maintained its own internal logic exceptionally well.

The whole experience of the film is heightened by Jeff Grace’s haunting piano soundtrack. The marriage of Folkways inspired Americana music and the single piano perfectly scores the normalness of the abnormality of a vampire world. One should never underestimate the power of a movie’s ambient music to maintain and elevate the impact of the visuals.

I can not recommend STAKE LAND enough to any of you. Even with its flaws it will entertain you in ways few other end of the world pictures have before.