Thursday, October 18, 2012

A review of "SUCK"


Confessions of a Film Junkie:  A review of “SUCK”
By: Brian Cotnoir

     With all the Vampire movies, television shows, and books that have came out over the last few years it’s kind of hard to ignore.  However, finding a good Vampire movie these days is very hard, especially with the literary and cinematic plague going around known as the Twilight Series.  Thanks to stories like “Twilight” and “True Blood” the vampire has been transformed from a creature that was once mysterious, terrifying, and sensual, to a bunch of overly sensitive, glamorous, sexual icons.  I know that the original vampire design (the one from Bram Stoker’s novel “Dracula”) was intended to be sexual and I like that about “Dracula”, but at the same time he was also terrifying and evil, compared to “Twilight’s” Edward Cullen who is just...a joke!  To many writers and film studios have decided to do away with the fear vampires are supposed to inflict and just focus on the raw sexuality, but every now and then a good vampire film does manage to break out, and in the past three years I’ve only seen two good vampires movies; one is “Day Breakers” and the other is the film I’m writing this review on “Suck”.   
   “Suck” tells the story of a Canadian rock band called “the Winners” who are looking for rock n roll immortality, but are always seem to come up short.  One night after a show the band’s bassist, Jennifer, goes to a party with a mysterious figure known as “Queeny”.  Queeny turns out to be a vampire and turns Jennifer into one as well.  Jennifer’s new “vampire image” starts bringing more and more fans to the show, because they think it’s a great gimmick and soon other members of the band want in and they tell Jennifer they want to be turned into vampires as well.  Eventually, the band gives in one-by-one and they are all transformed into a quick rising vampire rock band.  But later they start questioning if they made the right decision by transforming into vampires and are faced with a question; do they want rock n roll immortality as vampires or would they rather go back to the way they were?                          
    One thing I really like about “Suck” is the music.  The songs performed in the film are original works, but the scenes in the film with the songs are more like little music videos, than actual musical numbers.  Plus, they never finish a song like a traditional musical, they just start playing the song and then it eventually fades on into another scene.  The characters are very likeable and feature a slew of celebrity cameos including musicians the Burning Brides, Henry Rollins, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, and actor Malcolm McDowell who plays the Vampire Hunter who’s following the band, named Eddie Van Helsing.  One creative thing that I liked about the film is that for one scene when they wanted to do a flashback on part of McDowell’s character they actually used clips from one of Malcolm McDowell’s old movies (“Oh Lucky Man!”) and I must say it synched up perfectly.  I liked it a lot better than if they would have attempted to make Malcolm McDowell look younger or if they would’ve hired another actor to play a younger version of the Eddie Van Helsing.  The only character I did not like in the film was the main character, Joey, who is the leader of the band “The Winnners”,and is played by the films writer and director,
Rob Stefaniuk.  Joey’s character is anal retentive, whiny, and appears to be a control freak at points, but other than that the rest of the film is great.                                    
    “Suck” is a unique rock n roll vampire comedy and features catchy songs and slew of enjoyable characters.  On a scale of 1-10, I’d give it an 8.                                                           


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