Movie Review: Red Snow (2021)

Synopsis: After once again failing to publish a romance novel about vampires, Olivia Roma prepares to spend Christmas alone in her deceased mom's Lake Tahoe home. An injured bat crashes into the side of the house and she takes it in to try to nurse it back to health only to have the bat change into a handsome (and naked) vampire, Luke. She then lies to a vampire hunter and brings her surprise guest pig's blood so she can grill him for inside information to make her book better, oblivious to the fact her life is in danger, both from Luke and from his blood thirsty companions.

Who's in it? The movie stars Dennice Cisneros, Nico Bellamy, Laura Kennon, Vernon Wells and Alan Silva.

Review: I came across this movie on Amazon Prime and seeing it would no longer be available soon, decided to watch it. From the description, I thought it would end up being a unique, entertaining and probably gory vampire movie. It ended up being unique and a vampire movie, but not much else.

I think this film was a victim of the filmmakers deciding to pursue the wrong genre. I honestly believe this plot had a lot of potential if it were a straight-up horror film. You have a young woman who is all alone without even any neighbors and a team of vampires that have every advantage on her, including the one in her garage that has managed to manipulate her into helping him recover from his injuries. That's the kind of thing that could lead to a movie that is truly terrifying.

Instead, the filmmakers decided to make this more of a comedy and focus their efforts on making fun of the vampire/romance genre by making the protagonist a clueless fan girl who frankly was a lot more annoying than she was funny. My wife and I wouldn't have blamed Luke (Bellamy) for killing Olivia (Cisneros) just to shut her up and neither of us could believe anyone would be that dumb.

I also found I was confused about her motivations. Keeping him in her garage for research purposes sort of made some sense but there were also times when she seemed like she wanted to sleep with him, but the movie never really clarified if that was the case. 

I also kind of feel like the three vampires could have used more of a backstory. Despite the movie going to great lengths to discuss vampire cliches, the three in this movie really couldn't have been much more generic. The movie even chooses to go with an amnesia theme regarding Luke's human life and when and how he got turned, details that wouldn't have bogged down the plot (not that the pacing in this movie was great either way) while maybe giving him a bit more of a believable personality. All we really learned about his companions was their names.

And I'm sorry, but the ending to this movie is just dumb. It's a weird twist that just didn't work for me and only served to make Olivia even more unlikable than she already was. Did her experience suddenly make her the bad guy or was the movie supposed to make us glad she was able to get a measure of revenge? I kind of wish they would have just gone with something a little more predictable, like her finding out she's now a vampire too. Not that it would have helped much.

Final Opinion: It was a good idea but the decision to make it more of a comedy than a full-fledged horror movie just didn't work for me. Neither did the protagonist, who I thought was the most unlikable character in a film featuring three murderous vampires.

My Grade: D