ALICE AND THE VAMPIRE QUEEN ** USA 2023 Dir: Dan Lantz. 90 mins
Dan Lantz has been active in the film industry for several years now, and some of the movies he previously directed include Bloodlust Zombies, Alpha Rift, and Hayride to Hell. His most recent project is a new vampire movie called Alice and the Vampire Queen, which he wrote and directed. Vampire fans might be intrigued by this new film, although they will probably end up being disappointed.
Shelby Hightower stars as Alice, a former celebrity chef who was recently released from prison after serving a long sentence for murdering her abusive husband. Unable to mind meaningful employment, Alice is forced to work in a sleazy diner, where her manager treats her like trash. Although her situation looks bleak, things soon turn in a positive direction for Alice after a mysterious stranger named Charles (Graham Wolfe) offers her a job as the head chef in a prestigious restaurant. The only catch is that all of the customers at the restaurant happen to be vampires.
Alice soon settles into her new job, and she also pretends not to be bothered by the fact that she is working in a restaurant for vampires. However, she soon begins to have second thoughts about her new position, despite the enviable salary she receives. Especially since it starts to become apparent that she will be on the menu if she starts to outlive her usefulness. Hightower poured everything she had into her role as Alice, creating a tragic portrait of a woman who strives to take back everything the world took from her. Possibly due to budget constraints, most of Alice and the Vampire Queen takes place in the restaurant, with only a handful of scenes occurring in other locations. We also saw very little of Alice reacting with regular people, as most of the supporting characters were either vampires or their human servants, who were almost as strange as the beings they served. It would certainly have been beneficial to have learned more about Alice by witnessing more of how she acts around others in order to be given a stronger understanding of her personality. But we still learned that Alice is an undeniably strong woman who refuses to yield, with Hightower’s performance cementing this fact.
Aaron Dalla Villa was also captivating as Kieran, a rebellious vampire who refuses to follow the rules of his clan, which often lands him in trouble with his superiors. Kieran’s refusal to play by the rules makes him something of an outcast, with his willingness to be free making him instantly relatable. And Dalla Villa’s beguiling performance also helped to turn the character into an affable rogue. However, many of the other performers were notably miscast. This includes Brenna Carnuccio, who did not come across as charismatic or intimidating throughout her performance as Isabella Knight, the titular queen of the group of vampires who frequently visit the restaurant. And Xavier Michael was irritating as the queen’s flamboyant servant, Fredrick.
As you could have ascertained from the title, Alice and the Vampire Queen takes some inspiration from Alice in Wonderland. But aside from the vaguely similar concept of a person named Alice being drawn into another world which she does not fully understand, the connections to the book never really went anywhere. At some points, the characters also quoted passages from the book in a way which seemed forced and arbitrary, and the remaining connections to Alice in Wonderland were few and far between. It seems like Lantz wanted to create a modern vampire story which was very loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll’s acclaimed work of fiction, without really having a clear vision of how to implement the idea.
Most of the characters in the film speak with absurd accents, and viewers will quickly become tired of listening to the way in which they talk. The reason for the accents seems to be that, since the vampires consider themselves to be superior to humans, they attempted to sound elegant and refined whenever they spoke, while also ordering their human servants to do the same. But the abundance of absurd accents will certainly grate on your ears. In particular, Graham Wolfe’s bizarre attempt at sounding like a refined Englishman made him difficult to understand at times, and the actor’s strange manner of speaking severely hindered his performance. And the film itself was clearly aware of how ridiculous the accents sounded. For instance, at one point, one of the vampires said a human’s accent sounded horrible. And towards the end, Alice says to a man named John that she was not sure how to pronounce his name, because she was so used to listening to people talking with ridiculous accents. It remains unclear if these moments were originally in the script or if they were added after the start of shooting, when the filmmakers noticed how ludicrous the cast sounded with their accents. But these brief exchanges of dialogue still highlighted one of the film’s major flaws in a way which seemed all too self-aware.
Despite its relatively short runtime, Alice and the Vampire Queen moved at a painfully slow pace, and the relatively simplistic story took far too long to unfold. The plot largely consisted of Alice coming to understand her true worth as she worked for employers who considered themselves to be better than her. And not much else of actual relevance occurred after she arrived at the restaurant. Although there was a striking sequence in which Alice was abducted by a psychotic human who was also employed by the vampires before being rescued. And there was also another noteworthy scene in which Kieran unexpectedly turns up at her home and seemingly attempts to convince her not to live her life for others. But aside from these two scenes, very little noteworthy events actually occurred, and most of the rest of the plot consisted of Alice preparing meals for the vampires. Although there were some instances of strong gore, they were not enough to redeem the otherwise uneventful nature of the film. The script clearly needed polish before the start of shooting, which was evident throughout most scenes.
Although Alice and the Vampire Queen strived to be bold and unique, it was ultimately a disappointing vampire film which fell short of its ambitions. The performances of Hightower and Dalla Villa were certainly worthy of praise, but there was little else of value on offer. Since there are plenty of other vampire films being released at regular interviews, Alice and the Vampire Queen is ultimately a difficult film to recommend.
Review by David Gelmini
ALICE AND THE VAMPIRE QUEEN is available to rent/buy on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA