Universal

PG 13 108 min

Uh maybe I’m missing something.

As it turns out my guess that this is a part of some series of fantasy novels was correct.

The Saga Of Darren Shan by, oddly enough, Darren Shan appears to be a sprawling fantasy/horror epic and this film is one of the installments.

That’s the reason there’s no hard and fast beginning and no more than a cliffhanger at the end.

Still I’m puzzled. Just toward whom is this aimed?

Teenage girls love sappy romantic vampires like TWILIGHT and teenage boys like lots of blood as in, well, BLOOD.

This doesn’t fit in either category, but there are elements of both here and therein lies the rub. What you end up with is closer, in style, to a darker and creepier HARRY POTTER.

Here’s the idea.

There are two groups of vampires roaming the underworld, one evil and one not so evil.

The latter group stuns their victims and takes just enough blood to survive, while the bad ones have no qualms at all about killing people. As a matter of fact they like it.

Lanton (a terribly miscast John C Reilly) is the de facto leader of the less evil group and has managed a fragile truce for two centuries but there's trouble on the way.

He’ll take a regular kid Darren (Chris Massoglia) as his protégé in preparation for a prophesied battle royal, and their bonding is the basis of this particular chapter. Instead of Potter’s school for wizards this Darren moves into a traveling freak show populated by dozens of semi human oddities who may or may not become more intriguing as the saga unfolds.

It certainly seems that there’s enough foundation to build upon but, as it often happens, there’s too much background trimmed to make a multi tome opus into a two-hour movie.

As the sequels come out the characters may become more interesting as the grand scheme comes together.

It’s not quite there yet.

C+

WSS

Email westsidesteve@aol.com