Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

To the cinema today to see Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Apprentice. We knew it would be dismal, but sadly it wasn’t charming enough to be a giggle. We really should’ve gone to see 500 Days of Summer or even Fantastic Mr Fox. The Vampire’s Apprentice made Vampire Knight look like a masterpiece. Hell, it made Twilight look sleek and well-written.

I’m not ignorant of Darren Shan’s books, upon which the film was based. I first heard of him on my online reading communities, where I was somewhat impressed to hear that Shan often churns out two books a year, while still getting inordinately high sales. When I heard that the books were to be adapted to a manga, I was surprised, for that is very unusual for an occidental book, so checked out the first few chapters of the first of them.

My god, was it terrible. In the ugliest prose I have ever seen in print, Shan tried to sound hip and rebelliously creepy with his main character’s love of spiders, and the dialogue was a constant assault on actual speech and decent characterisation. I gave up after the kids watched the freak show, convinced that the book was appalling and should be avoided at all costs. When the manga appeared online, I gave it a chance, and while it was marginally less terrible without all the sins of prose, it still had to struggle with a genuinely awful premise, uninteresting and uneven main characters and I abandoned it after Darren goes back for Crepsley’s help. And then came a Hollywood film.

Well, in spite of how poor the Twilight book seems to be, the film was not that bad. People like to hate it, and sure, there are huge flaws with its plot, depiction of vampires and conception of romance, but it was well-put-together, largely well-acted and had impressive action. This may have been the same. It wasn’t. It made me wish for New Moon.

I hate plots driven by a vague prophecy, here about young leaders of two-dimensional vampire factions. I hate exposition sequences that make the protagonist popular but then never back it up. I hate character traits stuck on only for plot advancement. I hate when we’re supposed to believe two boys who would have fallen out a thousand times thanks to wildly different characters could be best friends. I hate when respected actors like John C. Reilly and Willem Dafoe ham it up too much and only look like cocks (although the guy playing Mr Tiny was fey and disgusting enough to pull it off), and when Salma Hayek does exactly the same performance AGAIN. I hate when a poster airbrushes a good-looking main character to look like plastic. I hate when we’re supposed to believe a character has developed and overcome a prejudice because they get horny. I hate emotional shallowness and stories where we’re led to expect global warfare but see scuffles between kids. Yeah. Didn’t get a good impression here.

Weitz brothers, after screwing Philip Pullman over, and now this, stay well away from Young Adult fantasy books.