Joyless and dim, the grubby supernatural thriller “Vampires of the Velvet Lounge” often seems more like a filmed rehearsal for a movie than a fully completed feature. A number of creative decisions barely make sense, and soon a flurry of unanswered questions piles up. These nagging questions include, but are not limited to, creative decisions, like: Why does Cora, Dichen Lachman’s vampire-hunting ex-soldier protagonist, sound like she needs a tonsillectomy during her hilariously raspy voiceover narration?
Writer/director Adam Sherman (“She’s Just a Shadow”) and his collaborators also barely develop their characters, leaving one to wonder basic stuff like what kind of relationship Elizabeth (Mena Suvari), the movie’s main vampire antagonist, has with Joan (India Eisley), her younger and relatively heedless undead protégé?
Even the most forgiving viewers will likely be distracted by so many head-scratching creative decisions, making it that much harder to appreciate this genre exercise’s lowest-common-denominator appeal.
Like a misconceived combo of “Interview with the Vampire” and “From Dusk Till Dawn,” “Vampires of the Velvet Lounge” often feels like bad fanfic. Three screens’ worth of introductory text presents PowerPoint-style trivia about Elizabeth, better known as the infamous Hungarian Countess Elizabeth of Bathory, who, in real life, was rumored to have bathed in young women’s blood to look youthful. Suvari’s character doesn’t seem that concerned about her looks, though, nor do a number of establishing details ultimately pay off, like how Elizabeth’s high body count makes her the most prolific serial killer of all time.
Instead, we mostly follow Elizabeth and Joan as they try to seduce a trio of middle-aged dopes, led by newly divorced sad sack Luke (Tyrese Gibson) and his nagging lawyer Randall (Stephen Dorff). Some minor squabbles arise during their misadventures, but nothing so dramatic or surprising that you can’t imagine spending this much time with these disposable characters.
At least the vampires’ interest in Randall’s group culminates in a memorably kitschy and regrettably unhinged joyride that includes standout lines like, “I told you not to light her on fire!” as well as one of the most flamboyant and desperate-to-nettle bloodbaths that you’ll see this year. Head-scratching moments like these are unfortunately so rare that it’s hard not to think about what else doesn’t add up here, like why dating apps and AI—the latter of which doesn’t seem to factor much into the movie—are repeatedly said to be the exclusive tools of the rich and predatory, and what that says about Elizabeth.
Joan and Elizabeth’s insubstantial connection, as well as their sketchy characterizations, are at least consistently underdeveloped when compared with the bond that Cora shares with Alexis (Rosa Salazar), her vamp-slaying protégé. Meaning, there’s not much to that relationship either since Cora’s miserable character is only hinted at through rote and embarrassingly flat voiceover narration, like when she mumbles that “I only need one victory to redeem myself from a lifetime of defeats.” Lachman’s fares better when her character‘s effectively suggested through stock physical gesture, but her voiceover narration sounds like ASMR sandpaper, and her posturing, par-boiled dialogue doesn’t help much either
Alexis at least wants to believe in the possibility of online romance, though why is anyone’s guess. She’s young, savvy, and self-motivated, so it’s genuinely hard to tell why she would want to make it with a vampire who tries to meet up with her through an unnamed dating app. There’s also no chemistry between Salazar and her toothy foil, making their inevitable and mostly lifeless confrontation more disappointing. At least there’s enough blood in this scene to compensate for its other missing qualities.
The same can’t really be said about the other fetish-forward scenes that ultimately never deliver more than suggestions of a good time. The movie’s strip club chic aesthetic is so underwhelming, from its negligible lighting to its dull visual compositions, that the least choosy dumpster-diver will likely still be more confused than delighted by the movie’s awkward stabs at pandering, like when one of the vampire’s accomplices (Mark Boone Junior) whips out a comically oversized pair of pruning sheers to decapitate three of Elizabeth’s victims. That sort of grisly overkill might’ve been amusing if the rest of the movie weren’t so haphazardly assembled.
I honestly wish I could tell you that there’s a forgiving cultish audience out there for “Vampires of the Velvet Lounge,” whether you’re a masochist who wants this movie to be so bad it’s good or a forgiving horror buff who simply wants to see a movie featuring such an admirably eccentric cast (not to mention some “musical themes” by Bear McCreary). I don’t think such an audience exists, though, because “Vampires of the Velvet Lounge” just isn’t fun enough. Give it a shot if you don’t believe me, but if you do, don’t be surprised if wondering about how this movie got made eventually becomes more interesting than actually watching it.
