Byzantium (2012 113min.) [Ch4 12.45am saturday & +1]
Horror thriller starring Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan. Clara, a beautiful vampire, and her undead daughter Eleanor are eternally on the run from a male-only secret society. They stop at a seaside town where an impressionable man agrees to turn his family home into a bordello where they can sate their need for blood, except that Eleanor has grown weary of their lifestyle.
Director Neil Jordan, of course, has form with Gothic tales having directed both Interview With The Vampire and The Company Of Wolves in the past.
Here he again creates a stylish, glossy world for the characters to inhabit and the two leads are given the freedom to portray their characters as fully rounded individuals rather than cartoon monsters with outsized fangs.
It resembles Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995) as it explores the problems of centuries old 'people' attempting to fit in to contemporary society.
It's very well done and works hard to avoid most of the cliches of the vampire genre as well as retaining some of the mystery and sweeping imagination of the best of the field.
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