Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant


Cirque du Freak is something for teens, a modern Fright Night, as far as I’m concerned, and it’s a good, clean vampire fun. Two best friends become vampires after visiting a peculiar little freak show run by Mr. Tall (Ken Watanabe) and come down on opposite sides of a vampire conflict: one sides with the good vampires (they do not kill humans) and the other sides with the evil vampires who kill humans and want a war with the good vampires.


Silly, of course, but this kind of goofy cinematic fun is sometimes what movies are all about. Director Paul Weitz (In Good Company, About a Boy) keeps the action moving in this simple but entertaining good versus evil story. The decent performances by John C. Reilly, Selma Hayek and a terrific turn by Willem Dafoe as one of the "good" vampires provide the flick with a little street cred, as does a screenplay co-written by one of my favorite screen scribes Brian Helgeland (Payback, Mystic River, L.A. Confiedential).

Comments

Rick said…
Downhill for Chris Sarandon since Fright Night and Princess Bride. What a shame.
6:59 PM
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