STAKE LAND (2010)

Studio:       Dark Sky Films
Director:    Jim Mickle
Writer:       Nick Damici, Jim Mickle
Producer:  Larry Fessenden, Peter Phok, Brent Kunkle, Adam Folk, Derek Curl
Stars:     Nick Damici, Connor Paolo, Michael Cerveris, Sean Nelson, Kelly McGillis, Danielle Harris, Bonnie Dennison, Chance Kelly, Tim House, Larry Fessenden, Adam Scarimbolo

Review Score:

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Summary:

A teenager teams with a mysterious man to survive on the road in a North American wasteland overrun by vampires.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

North America collapses into a post-apocalyptic wasteland as a vampire epidemic spreads throughout the country. Teenager Martin loses his parents and infant sibling to a monster, but is rescued by vampire hunter Mister. Mister and Martin take to the road together, with Mister training Martin in survival tactics.

Making their way north to supposed sanctuary in Canada’s New Eden, Mister and Martin stop in a lockdown town for supplies.

After returning to the road, Mister stops to rescue a nun called Sister before two cloaked men belonging to a radical cult known as The Brotherhood can assault her. Mister murders both men.

Mister, Martin, and Sister fall for a trap laid by a Brotherhood group led by Jebedia Loven. Because one of the cultists Mister killed was his 16-year-old son, Jebedia takes Mister captive and dumps him on the road amidst a circle of vampires. Mister fights his way through the creatures and survives.

While Sister remains prisoner, Jebedia allows Martin to go free. Although he laments leaving the woman behind, Martin regroups with Mister and they return to the road.

Mister and Martin pick up pregnant bar singer Belle in the town of Lincoln. The trio takes refuge in a house where Mister forces Martin to kill a young female vampire hiding in the attic.

After avoiding a Brotherhood blockade on the road, Mister, Martin, and Belle rescue former soldier Willie, whom the Brotherhood left bound in a portable toilet.

Disguised as Brotherhood cultists, the quartet infiltrates a Brotherhood roadblock and takes Jebedia prisoner. Jebedia is cut so that his blood will attract vampires and he is left strung up to die.

Mister, Martin, Belle, and Willie reunite with Sister, who escaped captivity, in a lockdown town named Strivington. While survivors spend the evening celebrating outside, a Brotherhood helicopter drops in vampires that unleash destruction and incite panic. Mister, Martin, Belle, Willie, and Sister hide in a house for safety.

In the morning, the town begins cleaning up from the chaos. Mister, Martin, Belle, Willie, and Sister go back on the road. Mister’s car dies, forcing everyone to continue trekking through trees and hills on foot.

While camping in a junkyard, the group is beset by berserker vampires. Everyone flees through a cornfield. Unable to keep up, Sister leads the creatures away from the others. She then shoots herself in the head before the vampires can maul her.

Mister, Martin, Belle, and Willie set up shelter in a broken down bus. Willie goes missing one morning and is later found dead in the trees. Mister realizes that the creature who killed Willie outsmarted their traps and stalked them strategically.

The creature abducts Belle and uses her as bait. Martin follows Belle’s screams and discovers that the intelligent monster is Jebedia, who was transformed by the vampires. Mister arrives and the men fight savagely, with Mister and Martin ultimately teaming up to take out Jebedia.

Because Jebedia left her strung up and bleeding out, Martin reluctantly stakes Belle as an act of mercy.

Mister and Martin find new shelter in a diner with a young woman named Peggy. Sensing Martin’s interest in Peggy and recognizing the boy’s ability to care for himself, Mister quietly disappears alone. The two teenagers set out on their own for New Eden.

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Review:

Martin just watched a monster maul his mother, father, and defenseless baby brother.  If not for unexpected intervention from a mystery man known only as Mister, Martin might be mutilated meat alongside them.

There is no time for mourning.  Savagery and survival are the way of things since a vampire apocalypse cloaked the continent, decimating society’s structure in the process.  Governments have crumbled.  In this new world order, outlaws fend for themselves, the meek struggle to settle new communities, and religious fanatics rise up in a brotherhood as fearsome by daylight as the creatures are at night.

Mister doesn’t need a teenage sidekick, but Martin does need a mentor.  As an uneasy father figure, Mister takes the boy on the broken roads in search of supposed sanctuary up north named ‘New Eden.’  Navigating crazed cultists, cutthroat scavengers, and vicious vampires requires Martin to learn Mister’s ropes fast.  With assistance from other ragtag nomads collected along the way, this unlikely duo might stand a chance at finally making their way out of figurative darkness and into literal light.

It’s unusual for a film featuring this much familiarity to feel simultaneously inspired by so much sincerity.  Vampires haven’t been fresh in fiction since who knows when.  Neither have zombie apocalypse backdrops.  In fusing these two foundations together, “Stake Land” builds a stage where cinema standards like gruff drifter, kill or be killed conundrums, and idealism eclipsed by the reality of self-preservation find invigoration from a presentation powered by played-straight performances, as well as a starkly sober take on a traditional tale of tragic terror.

There’s a lot to breathe in as Martin and Mister traverse North America encountering a nun on the run, a pregnant bar singer, and a vindictive pagan priest.  The movie makes sure you have enough time to absorb the full scope of its world while hooking into its people at a measured pace that rarely rushes and keeps lingering moments feeling lively.

“Stake Land” packs two TV seasons worth of storylines into its runtime and does so without becoming overstuffed.  “The Walking Dead” would take 12-20 episodes to cover the ground “Stake Land” hikes in 95 minutes.  “Stake Land” is as comparably bleak as its zombie television counterpart, yet its flirtation with nihilism doesn’t dare dip down enough to risk being uncomfortable as enjoyable escapism.

The movie’s depiction of a vampire wasteland owes a conceptual debt to Richard Matheson’s “I Am Legend,” to be sure.  But the realization of that idea through camera and characters is an original vision belonging uniquely to “Stake Land.”

The film isn’t cheap about details.  Insert shots of charred corpses still smoldering with smoke wisps, car windshields rigged with fence frames, even random street signs with bullet holes pack personality everywhere.  This is a living, breathing, frightening world that doesn’t overreach to be theatrically flashy at the expense of being relatable.  Balancing what we need to see for the story with what we want to witness as voracious viewers isn’t easy for an indie production to achieve and “Stake Land” still succeeds.

Pieces of the plot are patently predictable, but pointed casting erases eye rolls through earnestness.  Kelly McGillis plays a nun undergoing an expected crisis of faith.  Yet when emotion cascades on her face as she confronts rape and captivity, her references to vampires no longer sound silly in the slightest.

Michael Cerveris may be the only actor who didn’t get the memo that “Stake Land” is more than a midnight monster movie.  His sneering and snarling can stand to be turned down a touch, though that may be a nit being picked.

If “Zombieland” wasn’t a comedy, or “The Road” had slightly, only slightly, less somber drama, their similar setups would fall right in line with “Stake Land’s.”  Co-writer/director Jim Mickle and co-writer/star Nick Damici treat their father/son road trip through Armageddon with the same seriousness as Cormac McCarthy’s story.  While McCarthy’s is anchored in Pulitzer Prize-winning prose, Mickle and Damici’s is immersed in entertainment value worthy of awards as well, in addition to earning any audience’s attention as a forceful horror film.

Review Score:  90

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