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Film Review: Summer of Blood

Summer of Blood Poster.

Erik Sparrow (Onur Tukel) turns down his girlfriend’s marriage proposal and is immediately dumped for it. When he is unable to get a date on his own, he is forced to turn to the internet to get one. Considering he is incredibly offensive and unable to stop himself from talking, his dates are turned off by him.

Erik is kind of an idiot, unable to recognize the obvious and unable to shut up. He cannot take anything seriously, even when a man is dying in front of his face. Instead of getting help, he stands there and rambles on before he finally searches out a phone, which he quickly abandons when he gets into a conversation with two strangers.

Summer of Blood poster.

He is dirty and unshaven and apparently horrible at sex. He cannot take criticism but he criticizes everyone else and has an undeserved inflated ego for someone who is overweight and unattractive to the opposite sex. All of this is true until he comes upon a tall skinny man in an alleyway. Erik rambles on like a fool instead of noticing that something is truly off about this man and ends up getting bitten and drained. In lieu of dying, Erik becomes one of the undead, forced to seek out blood and finds hiself suddenly irresistible to women.

Summer of Blood reminds me a lot of a vampire episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Erik is unlikeable and constantly talking himself into bad situations. Like Larry David, Erik doesn’t mean to cause problems or get himself into these situations but his inability to shut up or recognize social cues gets him into trouble.

Onur Tukel, who plays Erik, is also the writer and director of Summer of Blood, which is funny because he comments on a date about how he wants to write, direct and star in his own movie. He writes the film like a Woody Allen film where everyone is opinionated, argumentative and sarcastic and every situation drips with irony.

Erik actually reminds me of someone I used to know in both appearance and attitude, with his inability to take responsibility for his actions or to admit that he is wrong in any way. This made it slightly difficult to connect to his character at first but, once he became a vampire, he became slightly more likable. It took him dying and killing people to see what kind of person he was and the kind of person he wants to be. I respect that a lot more than his previous personality.

The almost incessant talking makes Summer of Blood seem like a longer movie than it actually is but all in all it was a pretty good movie. I had a hard time telling if it was funny or if it seemed funny because they talk so fast and so much like they do in Gilmore Girls, making it so you don’t have enough time to fully process the humor. I know you know what I am talking about.

It can be hard to come up with an original vampire idea because there are so many stories out there but Summer of Blood was a fun spin on the typical story we are usually served. It starts out as a man’s love story with himself but ends with a love story involving someone else. At times, the progression seems slow but there is progress nonetheless and, in the end, I enjoyed myself.

Summer of Blood is available this week from Dark Sky Films.

 


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Ann Hale is the horror editor for Pop-Break.com and a senior contributing writer, reviewing horror movies and television shows. She is also the American Correspondent for Lovehorror.co.uk. Ann attended East Carolina University, majoring in English Literature. She is a collector of Halloween (the film) memorabilia and is a self-admitted opinionated horror nerd. You can follow her, her collection and her cat, Edward Kittyhands on Twitter and Instagram @Scarletjupiter

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Ann Hale
Ann Hale
Just a giant nerd in love with horror, 80's action flicks, Star Wars and Harry Potter. Hit me up on Twitter or Instagram @scarletjupiter to talk horror or just to browse the horror collection.
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