Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on August 2012

What, just because you’ve been hailed as one of history’s leading film auteurs, you can’t make a moronic little vampire comedy? Francis Ford’s Coppola’s tongue was, I hope, planted firmly in cheek when he made this silly albeit nicely textured curio. A pudgy Val Kilmer plays a “third-string Stephen King” horror novelist who happens upon a small-town story that has the potential to revive his career, and begins an investigation. It’s nicely filmed but not very original or all that funny. Recommendable only as a diverting lark. Also Elle Fanning, Ben Chaplin and an amusingly hammy Bruce Dern.