Director – Ben Jagger, Screenplay – The Jagger Brothers & Christopher P. Taylor, Producers – Matthew Berkowitz, Todd Matthew Grossman, Ben Jagger, Dean Jagger, Justin Steele & Christopher P. Taylor, Photography – Luke Hanlein, Music – Russ Irwin, Visual Effects Supervisor – Ashwin Singh, Production Design – Drew Klopfer & Jade Spiers. Production Company – Jagger-Wagner Productions/Startree Productions/Them Too.
Cast
Dean Jagger (Corbin Nash), Corey Feldman (Queeny), Fernanda Romero (Macy), Richard Wagner (Vince), Chris Pardal (Frank Sullivan), Malcolm McDowell (Blind Prophet), Rutger Hauer (Stranger), Bruce Davison (Jack), Lovake Heyer (Karl), Patrick Brennan (Wade), Thomas Q. Jones (Darius)
Plot
Corbin Nash, an NYPD cop, is found by the stripper Macy, left in an L.A. alley after being beaten up. He stood up for Macy when she was being harassed by an aggressive customer so she takes him back to her place to recover. A year ago, Nash was approached by a stranger and a mystery blind man and told that he had a great fate awaiting him. Nash set out to investigate a series of disappearances. These led him up against the vampires Queeny and Vince who had been abducting people for their blood, while placing others into underground fight tournaments. After being placed into these fights, Nash began to discover his destined role as a monster hunter.
Corbin Nash was the second film from brothers Ben and Dean Jagger, who are both British despite the film’s American focus and setting. The two had made a couple of short films and then the full-length The Paddy Lincoln Gang (2014). Dean’s presence as an actor began to grow after appearing in a couple of episodes of Game of Thrones (2011-9), the tv series Warrior (2019-23) and other roles usually as tough guys. Subsequent to this, Ben without Dean went on to direct the horror film Room 203 (2022). Dean Jagger has taken to billing himself as Dean S. Jagger (although not here) to avoid confusion with actor Dean Jagger who appeared in Revolt of the Zombies (1936) and X the Unknown (1956).
For a long time, all that Corbin Nash has going for it is a great deal or grimdark atmosphere and gritty streetwise urgency, while suggesting that something monstrous is going on that needs to be fought, without actually anything happening. The whole film resembles a tough guy dressed up, with fashionable stubble, muscles bulging and face honed with grim intent who talks about how terrible the world is while never travelling out of his living room. Certainly, in this regard, Dean Jagger has the whole chiselled out of granite, tight-lipped and monosyllabic hero thing honed to perfection.
As Corbin Nash goes on, it appears that it is turning into an Occult Investigator story of sorts, albeit where the detective is a monosyllabic brute and there is no real detective story going on. Towards the very end, it becomes apparent that this nothing more than a routine Monster Hunter film where Corey Feldman and Richard Wagner are in fact vampires.
Dean Jagger in action as Corbin Nash
The one surprise of these scenes is Corey Feldman who plays the lead vampire in drag and lets all stops go in a performance that is immensely entertaining in its venomous nastiness. It is the most memorable acting one has seen Feldman since the 1980s. It is only at the very end where the film unleashes Dean Jagger as a badass vampire slayer and reveals where it has been wanting to go all along. It is a shame that it could not have done this something like 80 minutes sooner.
There is also quite a bit of flipping back and forward between past and present where you are often not quite sure when things are meant to be happening. Not to mention the action gives the confusing impression that it is taking place in both Los Angeles and New York at different times – there is no reason why it could not be both, but the script never gives an explanation why Nash had to travel from one side of the country to the other.
The brothers Jagger have announced a Corbin Nash 2.
