Director/Screenplay – Noah Segan, Producers – Cameron Burns, Aaron B. Koontz, Leal Naim, Josh Ruben & Noah Segan, Photography – Andrew Baird, Music – Robert Allaire, Visual Effects – Tranquility Base, Production Design – Jen Dunlap. Production Company – Paper Street Pictures.
Cast
Noah Segan (Francis), Victoria Moroles (Jane), Akasha Villalobos (Hilda), Josh Ruben (Roger Fieldner), C.L. Simpson (Sylvie), Ammie Masterson (Dr. Seward), Tracie Thoms (Ms. Shelling), Jon Proudstar (Nathan), Reece Everett Ryan (Caleb), Doug Benson (Mert the Clerk), Brian Villalobos (Security Guard), Karina Dominguez (Cousin Bonnie)
Plot
Francis is a vampire who has lived a long time. He travels the American Midwest in a 1969 Barracuda, sleeping in the car when it is day, attacking victims to feast upon before quickly moving on. He is then surprised by the appearance of fifteen year-old Jane who says he is her daughter. She has been rendered homeless with the death of her mother and has tracked him down via the internet. She has something of his vampire ways but can go out during daylight. He reluctantly takes her with him, intending only to drive her to Nebraska and drop her off to stay with a cousin. However, during the course of their journey, the loner Francis begins to start understanding something about responsibility.
Twilight (2008) hammered a stake into the heart of the Vampire Film, where the turning of the genre into a bloodless teen chastity romance served to render it toothless. Post-Twilight, the vampire film has been searching for new directions. Although many of the works to emerge have not gained the high-profile of their predecessors, there have been some highly creative works – see the likes of Stake Land (2010), A Girl Walks Alone at Night (2014), The Transfiguration (2016), My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell It To (2020) and Midnight Mass (2021).
Noah Segan is an actor who has bubbled away in assorted roles from Rian Johnson’s first film Brick (2005) to Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009), Someone’s Knocking at the Door (2009), Looper (2012), Starry Eyes (2014) and The Pale Door (2020), among others. I am a particular fan of his Deadgirl (2008). Segan had previously made his debut as director with the M.I.S.T.E.R. segment of the horror anthology Scare Me (2020).
Vampire father and daughter Noah Segan and Victoria Moroles
The grumpy loner lumbered with a kid has been a staple in cinema. Every tough guy gets to do it at least once – John Wayne in True Grit (1969) and Kevin Costner in one of Clint Eastwood’s most underrated directorial outings A Perfect World (1993) and comic pairings going back to Charlie Chaplin in The Kid (1921). There is also a whole bunch of films where action stars get to babysit kids with the likes of Kindergarten Cop (1990), The Pacifier (2005), The Game Plan (2007) and The Spy Next Door (2010).
Blood Relatives is not exactly a vampire comedy. It is more of a vampire Road Movie about the relationship between a reluctant father and his feisty daughter but one that also comes with a very laidback sense of humour. Imagine something like the visual aesthetic of the Midwestern vampire film Near Dark (1987) but with the dry comedic sensibilities of a Jim Jarmusch or a Hal Hartley.
The kitchen sink vampire film also has a reasonable history since the 1990s with films such as The Addiction (1995), The Hamiltons (2006) and My Heart Can’t Beat Until You Tell It To. This taps into the same vein with an entire plot about Noah Segan trying to find places to park his car so he can sleep out of the sunlight, or about how to adjust his lifestyle so that he can be a good parent – at one point, he is even seen attending a support group for solo parents.
This is dry but at times undeniably funny – like the scene near the start with Akasha Villalobos’s motelier bursting into the room, or various scenes with security guards and breaking into the asylum. One of the most strangely deadpan aspects is Noah Segan himself as the vampire who at times almost resembles a cartoon character in his expressions. As the daughter, Victoria Moroles considerably holds her own up against him. The funniest scene she gets is one posing as a relative to the film’s Renfield – an amusing performance from Josh Ruben, also one of the film’s producers and the director of Werewolves Within (2021) – and goes to visit him where he is committed to an asylum.
