Director/Photography/Music – Logan Thomas, Screenplay – Aric Cushing & Logan Thomas, Producers – Aric Cushing, Andrea Kaufman & Logan Thomas, Visual Effects – Russell Frazier, Visual Makeup Effects/Creature Effects – Eric Fox. Production Company – Triple Witching LLC.
Emma Holzer (Ariel), Josh Plasse (Joshua), Will Haden (David), Aric Cushing (Maximilian Maddox), Meg Foster (Sister Frank), Raphael Sbarge (Detective Warren), Scott Lindley (Peter)
Joshua is driving through the desert pursued by a large RV. Ariel is driving to her friend David’s place for Halloween when she comes across Josh in the road ahead bloodied and shirtless. He gets into her car, pleading with her to drive away as the RV comes trying to force them off the road. They spend the night at David’s place and then try to report what happened to the police, but the vampire creature that the locals call The Dark Wind comes in determined pursuit.
There’s No Such Thing as Vampires was the third film for director Logan Thomas who had previously made The Wave 3D (2008) and the horror films The Phantoms (2012) and The Yellow Wallpaper (2012), none of which seem to be widely seen.
Logan Thomas was an unknown before I sat down to watch the film but I was soon connecting with what he was doing. The central set-up that opens the film of two people being pursued through the desert by a sinister RV with a supernatural driver has overtones of Jeepers Creepers (2001). Perhaps even more so than that, you could draw comparison to the underseen The Forsaken (2001) with people being dragged into a pursuit of vampires across the Texas backroads by night. Of course, the set-up of the mysterious vehicle and pursuing driver has undeniable comparison to Steven Spielberg’s first film Duel (1971) in which Dennis Weaver was hunted by a malevolent black truck where we never saw the driver.
The two central characters played by Emma Holzer and Josh Plasse strike up a likeable connection, which the film seems on the verge of pushing towards an attraction in a dream sequence at one point. There are all manner of evocative scenes, especially one where an aging Meg Foster turns up as a nun who grants them shelter and talks of the Dark Wind that affects the valley, a scene that takes the film away from being a regular vampire film into the arena of something else altogether. On the other hand, the latter half introduces a backstory that tells how Josh Plasse is the son of the vampire and suggests Emma Holzer is the reincarnation of his love, which are plot elements that you feel needed far more given over to make them plausible than they get.
Logan Thomas holds up well as a director. Particularly good is a sequence where the characters are inside a police station as the power goes off and they are fleeing through the hallways and hiding under a room of empty office cubicles as the vampire stalks them. The only sequence that does not work as well as you feel that it should is the climactic venture into the vampire’s lair where the vampire is eliminated quickly and without much dramatic moment. I did however like the end the film goes out on with Emma Holzer driving off in the RV while Josh Plasse goes to sleep in the coffin of earth in the back, where Thomas has clearly set things up for a potential sequel.
There’s No Such Thing as Vampires does come with a reasonable degree of Genre Homage. The walls of Will Haden’s home are filled with posters of classic Universal horror films. Haden has several lines of dialogue where he extolls the joy of being able to watch Halloween (1978), diverting off to praise the career of John Carpenter, and Friday the 13th (1980), contrasted with roommate Scott Lindley who has only seen the Rob Zombie Halloween (2007) and the Friday the 13th (2009) remake and is unaware of any originals.
Trailer here