User Reviews

Where to begin? This movie doesn't do anything right.

The main character is a whining emo sun walking vampire. After slaughtering a bar full of people he and his too dumb to breath sister and brothers vampires manage to set themselves up in Europe somehow. There they meet up with a family of uber-vampires who have killed gazillions of normal people and vampires like them but who fail to kill a single one of these retards, they just like to push them and play with them. They do this while being, like, super-serious. The retards then kill them using vampire-skills against vampires who are as superior to them as they are to normal people.

The end.

Did I mention the 'lovestory'? Well, for no reason the youngest of the uber-vampires rescues the emo vampire and kills her brothers. Probably because he is so cool or something.

It tries to hide the lack of story by jumping around in the time line every 5 minutes. OK, moron is in a box, how does he get out? No, how does he get in. No suspense.

It's like watching a sad Monty Python killer bunny for 80 minutes without it trying to be funny.

I have no idea what kind of audience will be entertained by this crap. Even stoned retarded goth kids in puppy love will vomit.

I'm not sure if this movie is British or American or a mixture of both. But whatever it is, it's the biggest pile of rubbish this side of Transylvania.

The story begins at the end, with the central character telling a yarn about how he managed to wind up in a box. His story begins with two young people attempting to have sex out in the open in the English countryside. This seems to be a theme of this movie: bouncing boobs, naked bodies and a touch of lesbianism, all mixed with vampirism.

But the young couple are interrupted and murdered. No explanation other than their killers are two crazy young guys with knives.

We then move to an English village pub, where the central character, Francis Hamilton, gets involved in a fight, just after killing a British policeman.

There's also a phone call to an incestuous brother and sister who are having a threesome in France. Kinky and vampires - they end up slaying the female participant in their three-in-a-bed romp. Oh, and they also suck the blood out of a black guy who knocks on the door.

All this done in DAYLIGHT. Hang on, I thought vampires were supposed to hate the daylight. Or have hundreds of years of mythology been wrong? The story then switches again, to an 'earlier time', where there is another fight, but this time in America. It's daylight here too and there are vampires.

Does this sound very boring? Well, it is, and trying to maintain an interest in this trash is like trying to swim in a river of treacle.

And it continues in its merry way, until the end. None of it interesting. None of it scary. Acting is atrocious. A complete waste of time.

Please, don't bother. You'll never get that 90 minutes back.

1/10.

The royal vamps NEEDED new blood, because of the inbreeding going on in that area. So instead of breeding with this new blood from America, they decide to kill them and rape the twin sister. Trying to make these monsters into the goodguys was just silly. Who kills their own brother for a complete stranger that they met a day ago?

Vampire clan the Hamiltons become wanted fugitives in the wake of a massacre at a roadside diner. They seek refuge in England where they meet and run afoul of rival vampire family the Stuarts.

The Butcher Brothers relate the enjoyable and engrossing story at a constant pace, make nice use of the British countryside setting, offers a few nifty tweaks on standard vampire lore (for example, the vampires in this film can walk around in the daylight), maintain a tough gritty tone throughout, deliver a handy helping of bloody gore, and toss in some tasty gratuitous female nudity for trashy good measure.

The solid acting from the capable cast keeps this movie humming: Cory Knauf as the likeable Francis, Samuel Child as easygoing older brother David, Mackenzie Firgens and Joseph McKelheer as twisted twins Darlene and Wendell, Ryan Hartwig as the ailing Lenny, Elizabeth Henstridge as the sweet and foxy Riley, Daniel O'Meara as the suavely ruthless Father Stuart, Selina Giles as the perky, but deadly Mother Stuart, Sean Browne and Tom Holloway as raucous brothers Cole and Ian, and Sean Cronin as the vicious Cyrus. A neat little fright flick.

This production combines grindhouse with "Twilight" style vampires and doesn't do either one well. The film opens up in Ludlow, England as Francis (Cory Knauf) is looking for distant relatives and provides the far too used first person narration. The scene flashes back to the US then takes us back to England for no other reason then to try to look clever.

Francis is a vampire-type person. He and his family are on the lam after going berserk in a desert diner, caught on film. The youngest brother Lenny (Ryan Hartwig) got shot in the chest. Exactly how this family who lived isolated, wanted by the law, dragging along a bloody kid with a shotgun wound to the chest, gets overseas (I don't think they had passports either) is a plot point not mentioned. They are seeking help, as their parents are dead and they don't know how to cope with this genetic vampire issue they lived with their whole life.

The family splits up and Francis goes to Ludlow looking for answers not realizing predators don't like their territory to be overcrowded with rival predators.

The film has its grindhouse moments, but then dies. As a "Twilight" type film, the writing was simply too bad. While I liked the basic plot outline, the details and execution lacked forethought and planning. It appears they slapped something together knowing the public will buy it depending on how they sell it, such as placing "Twilight" and Tarantino's name on the jacket. It is not that good. For what it's worth: Elizabeth Henstridge can act better than frequent Razzy nominee Kristen Stewart.

Parental guidance: F-bomb, sex, nudity (Katarina Gellin, Zoe Grisedale, Elizabeth Henstridge or body double) Three stars is a stretch.

The Thompsons is a 2012 horror film directed by the Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) and is actually a sequel to the Butcher Brothers' previous film The Hamiltons.

The family is on the run and have taken to the road first of all in sequences set in Texas and Paris before the bulk of the story brings Francis (Cory Knauf) to rural England in search of others of his kind, which leads to a hook-up with the more confident, callous and well- established vampire clan, the Stuarts, led by the local patriarch (Daniel O'Meara) and his wife (Selina Giles).

Complications arise which involve the Stuarts' human-born daughter (Elizabeth Henstridge) and murderous twin sons (Sean Browne and Tom Holloway) which eventually bring in Francis's twin siblings, David (Samuel Child) and Darkene (Mackenzie Firgens), plus injured younger brother Lenny (Ryan Hartwig), whose role has changed radically since the first film.

What I liked in the first film, but I can talk about more this time round since this is the sequel and people should know what to expect, is that whilst the family are basically vampires, they are certainly no ordinary strain of vampire as they have not been turned. In a world where vampires procreate, they were born with a disease which left them blood thirsty killers. Killers that can set foot in daylight but are also just as susceptible to pain and death as anyone else. I felt this was a cool way of integrating something different into the world, and it works well here.

The film begins and continues in the same vein as the first, with the narration coming from Cory Knauf who was the highlight in the original film. He is even better here, and as well as being the main character in The Thompsons, he also had a hand in writing the screenplay. The narration works well, and I really enjoyed the 'time shifts' as we keep going back and forth via flashbacks which brings us up to date on what has happened in the 6 years since The Hamiltons was released.

The Thompsons is far glossier than the original and it has to shift our attitudes towards the family to make the film work. This is definitely a positive, as aside from one they were distinctly unlikable in the original movie. It plays much more like a thriller here, unlike The Hamiltons which was light on blood and tension. This time round we have vampire battles, blood and guts a-plenty and a family we find ourselves rooting for rather than railing against. Definitely how a sequel should be, and this certainly was an improvement in every way.

The Thompsons is a fast-paced, beautifully shot, fun and violent film with good performances from all the cast, including a star turn from Knauf, that relies more on the style than the substance. It's also nice to see everyone returning from the first movie, and whilst they have changed physically in the 6 years, character wise they are still the same but ultimately all pull together as families should. Whilst the dialogue at points is a little weak (and slightly stereotypical to how us people in Great Britain speak in a Dick Van Dyke movie) and the storyline is fairly simple, I was stunned by how good this film was considering it had been 6 years since the first film, and essentially it's a low-budget vampire film.

I would love to see a part 3 to this story, and hopefully Knauf is involved with the writing again as this movie improved on the original in every way. I definitely recommend this if you like your films fun and bloody, and if you can look past a couple of weak story aspects and dodgy accents then The Thompsons comes highly recommended. Try and watch part 1 of this series The Hamiltons first if possible though!

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