As a delta blues story, this is fantastic. The origin of the blues in sharecroppers, and the juke joints wherever black people could get together. And the long long decades later, shown in flash-forwards and visions, to when blues men are loved.
I might've liked to have more filmed backstory on the twins, some of them in action before they came back South; "show don't tell" but this does just seconds of show and long stretches of tell.
Every shot past dusk or inside is too dark; this is a bad idea generally, but even worse with black actors. Throw a diffuse light on everyone, and you might be able to see them. It's not 100% cyan/orange, but this is almost as bad. And the audio's mixed the usual "modern" way, whispering quiet and THEN BOOM ACTION, audience is now deaf. Wish I could hear more of the dialogue.
The vampires show up early, clearly visible but don't make a first move. The juke joint story gets to unfold as long as it needs. And the epilogue is excellent.
Action scenes are fine.
So it's the middle bit.
SPOILERS
The Irish borderer jig-dancing vampires are hilarious. The infection and telepathy is neat.
But the Vs are so goddamned stupid, and later the Humans are, too.
You got all the prey in a big wooden box. Don't need to ask to come in (is a juke joint a "house" anyway?), set a fire and pick them off as they run out. Or use the KKK to chase them out, take both.
Why do Vs in these mass turnings never have a WATCH? Assign one V to track sunrise, and have planned places to go hide. Sunrise happens every single day, it's not a surprise.
The killing box plan is bad. If you want to funnel your enemies, it needs to narrow; instead the big door goes into the dance floor, wide open. That's great cinematically to show a bunch of fights, but it's incredibly dumb when the V's are greater in number and strength than the Humans. The smart plan is to narrow them into a room or corridor, and pick them off.
Or just wait for dawn, and try to find their hiding places!
I hate plots that rely on everyone being dumb.
I really want to love this, it's mostly better than From Dusk Till Dawn (no movie will ever beat Cheech Martin's "pussy pussy pussy" rant). I love the ending. It does better character development in the middle. BUT. The Aztec vampires were massively more competently written.
★★★½☆
