‘Red Snow’ DVD Review
Stars: Dennice Cisneros, Nico Bellamy, Laura Kennon, Alan Silva, Vernon Wells | Written and Directed by Sean Nichols Lynch
Over the Christmas period, vampire romance novelist Olivia, saves a bat from death after it flies into her house. This was no ordinary bat though and she soon finds herself trying to fend off real-life vampires…
Anyone that has read more than a handful of my reviews or read a review or article of mine in November or December will know that I love Christmas and therefore of course, Christmas movies. I’m instantly drawn to any new Christmas horror hoping it will be more like Michael Dougherty’s Krampus and not one of the dozens of other straight to DVD Krampus movies.
I will get one of my main issues with Red Snow out of the way first. Unless I am mistaken there seems to be know reason for this movie to be set at Christmas. It could be set anywhere (although Lake Tahoe is a good location) at any time and it wouldn’t change the story or movie at all. This doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things but when I see snow, Christmas lights, trees and decorations, an advent calendar being used, Christmas songs being played then it seems a waste not to use the holiday as part of the story. At least with a few Christmas-themed deaths or ANY reason for this to be set at Christmas but it doesn’t happen.
Now with that out of the way, vampires at Christmas is actually a cool idea because I’m not sure I’ve seen it before. Surely that would have been the idea to push but instead it is literally just here’s some vampires, oh and it’s Christmas.
The first half of the movie tries to build the relationship between the two main characters – the vampire romance novelist and the vampire. They learn to trust each other and unsurprisingly start to like each others company pretty quickly.
Twilight isn’t just some influence here it’s actually mentioned. The fillmmakers can’t seem to decide whether they want to make a funny movie or a serious vampire flick. They seem to go with comedy for the first half and a more serious horror tone for the second half but neither works that well. The jokes and attempts at comedy just didn’t make me laugh. Things do improve when the violence and gore eventually shows up but it’s too little too late. Even a blood-splattered decapitation can’t save things and gore hounds might have turned off before then.
Experience actor Vernon Wells puts in a fun performance but the other actors show their inexperience at times. That said, they do play their roles well, it’s just the characters are badly written and it’s hard to care much about them.
An interesting conclusion to Red Snow can’t make up for what is a mostly poor affair. Looks like I’ll be waiting a little bit longer for a fun and entertaining Christmas vampire movie.
Red Snow is available to buy on DVD now from Walmart, Target, Amazon and can be streamed from all digital platforms including Googleplay, Microsoft, YouTube, iTunes, Vudu and Spectrum.
