Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Review: My Sucky Teen Romance

The product of teen horror filmmaker prodigy Emily Hagins, the high school vampire romance mocks the bloodsucker-obsessed pop culture world while simultaneously sucking the lifeblood from its veins. Rounding up a gang of raw, fresh-faced actors, Hagins tells the story of a group of friends at a sci-fi convention who encounter real-life vampires and try to use knowledge gleaned from movies, comic books and panel discussions to stay alive.

Elaine Hurt plays Kate, the proudly geeky protagonist who wants more than anything to become Bella to the Edward of Paul (Patrick Delgado), who proves to be not just a brooding vampire wannabe, but the genuine article. When an unlucky break finds Kate and her pals battling to save her soul, she struggles to reconcile her feelings for Paul with the movie tropes ingrained in her mind, as well as the need to protect her friends.

The dialogue and story twists are entertaining — for once, here are people who look and talk like actual teenagers, rather than 30-year-olds pretending to be younger — but the amateurish acting drags the production down to student film levels. The movie didn't quite do it for me, but I'd like to see what Hagins could do with a better cast and budget.

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