The Thompsons

Francis (Cory Knauf), the central character in The Butcher Brothers' The Thompsons (the sequel to their 2006 movie The Hamiltons), is something of a tortured soul, a vampire troubled by his bloody lifestyle, searching for a meaning to his existence. Having fled the US with his bloodsucking family, he now wanders the UK looking for others like him so that he can learn about his heritage and perhaps even find love among his own kind.

The photogenic cast; the oh-so-serious emo sensibilities; the romance between vampire clans; the film-makers desperately striving for a sense of cool: The Thompsons might easily be confused for an installment of the Twilight series if it wasn't for all the graphic sex and violence on display. I doubt very much that Bella Swan would ever get it on with an absinthe addled Parisian whore, or whether Edward would savagely tear the throat out of his victims, drenching himself in blood in the process, but the vampires in this film have no such qualms, narrowly preventing it from being another worthless piece of PG-13 horror-lite and just about earning it a recommendation from yours truly.

First of all I must say that it is nice to have a vampire movie that is not tailor-made for a teenage girl audience with sparkly vampires and big hair. However, that being said, then I will flip the sword around and say that this vampire movie is far from being amongst the more interesting or appealing of vampire movies that I have seen.

The story is about a family of vampires who flee from USA after having made it to the news with a video of them killing humans. The vampires find themselves in England where they seek the help of another vampire family, but is blood thicker than water?

Having sat through "The Thompsons" now, I must say that I am filled with an overwhelming sensation of that this storyline was utterly and completely unnecessary. The story left no lasting impression on me, nor did it manage to rise above mediocrity in its concept and execution.

It should be said that the people in the movie were actually doing a great enough job with their given roles, though it is not award-worthy material here, far from it.

For a vampire movie, then there were surprisingly few effects in the movie. One good thing, and an interesting thing, about the movie, was that the vampires here were not immortal nor undead. So that was an interesting approach to the mythical vampire creature.

"The Thompsons" is the type of movie that you watch once, then shrug your shoulders and forget about the movie. It failed to make a lasting mark, despite having enough fangs to bite deeply with.

After 6 years, The Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) return to the dysfunctional vampire family last seen in their low budget chiller The Hamiltons, who, as per that film's finale, now go by the name of The Thompsons. When a stop at a roadside diner puts them in the middle of a robbery, youngest member Lenny (Ryan Hartwig) is seriously wounded. After slaughtering robber and patron alike, the fiendish family flees to Europe to find help from others like themselves and escape the police manhunt. In the small town of Ludlow, England they find their British equivalent, The Stuarts and it seems they have found help for Lenny in this kindred family. But, The Stuarts unveil their own sinister agenda and as Francis (Cory Knauf) falls in love with their beautiful daughter, Riley (Elizabeth Henstridge), a war of the vampire clans erupts and a blood soaked battle for supremacy begins. Where the first film was a creepy and twisted family drama, the sequel shows us what a Twilight movie would be like if they had any real fangs… and gallons of blood. And The Butcher's version of that neutered vampire saga is a lot more gory fun. Where the first movie kept their vampiric nature a secret till the end, this is a full blown vampire flick that explains a lot of about the character's condition that wasn't fully explored in The Hamiltons. There are barely any humans in the cast either and those that are, don't last long. It's all red eyes, bared fangs and spurting blood. The film moves quickly too, at barely over 80 minutes, so there is little time wasted on melodrama and what I really liked was how the Butchers turned the sick and blood thirsty Hamiltons/Thompsons into the victims this time round and thus the heroes. We find ourselves rooting for characters that creep-ed us out in the first movie and that was part of what made this sequel entertaining. If you are a fan of The Hamiltons you probably will enjoy this sequel especially as the original cast are all back, except for Hartwig as Lenny, and they are taken in a different direction. The budget is slightly larger but, not by a lot as the Butcher's style seems to be a good fit for low budget indie horrors. It's not perfect, there are some flaws, it's not as atmospheric or creepy like the first film, not that it lacks it's share of shocking moments, but, overall an enjoyably different follow-up to the disturbing original.

This is not a real review, it should be taken more as a collection of impressions on the film.

Considering first of all that there are enough vampire films now and this is just the umpteenth but at least do it well, the film is very very mediocre and doesn't seem to commit, it seems like they simply wanted to make a vampire film because vampires usually sell but without adding anything else. The plot is very banal even if the plot twist isn't that bad and really surprised me, I dare say that this is the only positive thing about the film. However, we must also talk about the ending which is very far-fetched because it seems they wanted to hurry up and close the film and therefore made an ending that was a little too incongruent with the story just to give a happy ending to the events.

If a sequel tries to tell you a new story instead of rehashing/repeating what part 1 did, that is a good thing. Unfortunately this sequel is not only predictable (almost from start to finish), but also just above mediocre in general. That means it's not really bad, but it won't get your blood pumping either (no pun intended).

Since the main characters are established in the quirkier and better Thompsons, you'd expect this to go different places. And in a way it does, but that only is true in geographic terms. There's not a real story behind it all, it's a simple "match", that you will either like or you might find it too simple. Whatever the case, if you can bare with the characters (because you saw the previous film or just simply because you like the actors), than this is indeed watchable. Otherwise ... don't bother.