Perfect Creature |
  • New Zealand / UK • 2006 • 90m •   • Directed by: Glenn Standring. • Starring: Dougray Scott, Saffron Burrows, Leo Gregory, Scott Wills, Stuart Wilson, Craig Hall, Robbie Magasiva, Lauren A Jackson, Peter McCauley, Glen Drake, Stephen Ure, John Sumner, Roi Taimana. • Music by: Anne Dudley.      Set during the 1960s in an alternate New Zealand known as Nuovo Zelandia, PERFECT CREATURE imagines a world where vampires and humans peacefully co-exist, with the bloodsuckers the next step in human evolution. This delicate balance looks to be destroyed when an influenza epidemic begins to sweep the human population and one vampire turns to preying on humans. The church sends out Silus to catch the renegade vampire, Edgar. Silus joins forces with a human police captain, and discovers that Edgar harbors dark secrets.
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Review:
This New Zealand & British co-production was directed by Glenn Standring & is a sort of moody atmospheric Vampire horror thriller that had the potential to be great but a lack of focus & a general pedestrainism means I would struggle to even call perfect creature average let alone good. The script is the problem here, there the usual romantic subplot about the two leads falling in love, there's no real explanation given as to why Edgar goes crazy & starts killing people & none of the other Vampires ever has, the whole virus angle is abruptly dropped into the story late on & is never really given a conclusion, there's a subplot about humans dying from flu which is mentioned a few times but nothing significant becomes of it & the typical clichéd final confrontation between the two brother's (hunter & hunted if you prefer) is present & correct although it's totally forgettable & uninspired stuff. The film didn't feel that long & it's visually interesting but the bland character's, the predictable plot, the subplots that go nowhere & add very little to the film overall & a lack of any real entertainment value means it's not really worth making any sort of effort to see.
As already mentioned the film does look very good with a variety of different eras & styles used to depict the fictional world seen here, from war torn streets to futuristic labs to Victorian style fantasy with a dark & brooding 40's detective noir thriller feel too, it's quite strange to sit down & watch these contradictory settings & time-lines & decor come together (horse drawn carriages & motor cars on the same roads at one point along with air ships in the sky). There's not much blood or gore here, a few bitten necks & that's about it. The CGI is OK but the early scene of Edgar climbing a wall looks terrible.
With a supposed budget of about $11,000,000 this wasn't cheap & that's a decent amount of money & one suspects that most of that went on the production design & look of the film. Filmed in New Zealand. The acting is alright but no-one seems to show much interest & with such thin character's one can hardly blame them.
Perfect Creature is average at best, a Vampire horror thriller than could have been great if a bit more time had been spent on the script & a decent story that meant something. It's not terrible & it's interesting visual style is cool but overall I couldn't really recommend it.
Review by Paul Andrews from the Internet Movie Database.
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