The landlords are the monsters in the first trailer for The Teenage Vampire, out from Lionsgate ahead of a digital release on October 27.
The setup is a lease problem. A straightlaced young woman named Sandra moves into a chic bungalow in the Hollywood Hills expecting parties and romance, and discovers that her landlords are ancient vampires. Her first party guests do not make it out.
The register it is going for
The comparison the trailer invites, and makes no effort to dodge, is Fright Night. That is the tonal promise here — a vampire picture that knows it is funny, played straight enough that the kills still land. Not a mood piece, not found footage, not a metaphor with fangs.
Whether the film clears that bar is a different question, and one a trailer cannot answer.
Vampires have always had a real estate problem
Making the landlord the monster is a sharper idea than it looks, because property has always been the vampire’s actual logistical burden. The thing needs somewhere lightless to spend the day and it needs to be invited in. That is a housing problem with extra steps.
The genre has worked this seam for fifty years. Straker buys the Marsten House on Barlow’s behalf before the town goes under in Salem’s Lot. Jerry Dandrige moves in next door in Fright Night and the horror is partly that there is nothing you can do about your neighbor. The flatmates in What We Do in the Shadows argue about the dishes. What a landlord adds is leverage. The tenant already signed something.
Who is in it
Jazlyn Nicolette Sward plays Sandra, with Kelly Lynn Reiter, James Chalke, Spice Williams-Crosby, Luke Gregory Crosby, Courtney Akbar and Michael Cervantes filling out the cast.
Williams-Crosby is the name genre audiences will clock first. She played Vixis, the Klingon first officer, in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and she has spent four decades working as a stunt performer and fight choreographer alongside her on-camera roles. Casting an actual martial artist in a vampire movie is a decision that tends to show up on screen.
When you can watch it
Frank Mora directs from a script he wrote with Asif Akbar. Lionsgate puts The Teenage Vampire on digital platforms October 27, which is four days before Halloween and exactly the slot this kind of picture wants.
The Teenage Vampire arrives on digital October 27. If you want your vampires with considerably more prestige attached, we reviewed The Vampire Lestat earlier this year.
