The Horror Show
Stake Land
by Jim Mickle
My experience with Jim Mickle has been mixed thus far. My first with the director was Mulberry Street. It was released in 2007 as a part of Horrorfest II; I got around to watching it sometime in 2008. I honestly can’t remember why but I actually loathed that movie. More recently, I chose to review We Are What We Are and I thought it was amazing. For that reason, I decided to take on one of his other films this time around, Stake Land. Now, based on my experiences with his work in the past it could have gone either way.
Martin is a young teen and his world is torn a part in the vampire apocalypse. His family is slaughtered and Mister, a vampire hunter, saves him. Mister decides to take the young boy under his wing and train him to kill vampires. Together, they are traveling north to New Eden, a rumored sanctuary from the monsters. They make several traveling companions along the way with the same goal: Belle a pregnant woman, Sister a nun, and Willie a former Marine. Besides the vampires, the main obstacle they must overcome is The Brotherhood, a large cannibal cult who worships vampires as “god’s will.” The leader Jebedia Loven holds a grudge against Mister and is willing to go to extreme lengths for vengeance.
Stake Land was awesome. I really don’t know how else I can explain it. I thought the vampires were badass. Despite being vampires they take on many zombie-esque traits, like mindlessness. Those vampires are much more interesting than the tortured-sparkly-vampires-who-can’t-appreciate-being-a-vampire. It reminded me a lot of Vincent Price’s classic The Last Man on Earth, one of my favorite films. Unlike the Price film, the vampires, while brainless, weren’t slow and feeble. They were fast, aggressive, and tough as nails. They took on that 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead remake feel. It added a level of excitement and action to what could have been a little boring otherwise. While slow-moving zombies are awesome and I love classic films, today’s audiences tend to be a little ADD and need a higher level of stimuli. It doesn’t stop there though. It takes on the post-apocalyptic feel of The Road. It reminds us in hard times it’s not nature or vampires that we need to worry about, it’s other people. Even though not all people are bad, there are ones that will take drastic measures to survive and even eat their fellow man. That’s terrifying, you’re not safe anywhere and you can’t be sure of who to trust. It’s like taking elements from some of my favorite movies and rolling them into one. The Last Man on Earth, 28 Days Later, and The Road hybrid is a combination that only spells success.
Even though these are aggressive zombie-vampires, they have some traditional vampire lore incorporated. I find that all too often vampires are over powered. They can throw cars, run at light speed, are immune to sunlight, don’t need human blood to live, can’t be staked, aren’t effected by garlic, and not repelled by holy relics. It’s not balanced, with great power comes great weakness. It’s what makes modern day vampire films so boring. The vampires in Stake Land can be killed by stakes to the heart and by severing the spine. They even make a joke about garlic and vampires at one point. Mister tells Martin to rub his stake with garlic oil and Martin inquires if that actually works. Mister then tells him that it couldn’t hurt. The movie also doesn’t explicitly state what happens to a vampire in sunlight. Occasionally, they stumble across charred vampire remains in the streets during the daylight hours and I feel like it’s implied that these are vampires who are caught in sunlight. I liked that it wasn’t actually tackled in the movie because it wasn’t relevant to the plot. However, I’m glad they addressed it in a subtle way to answer any questions without having to write dialogue just to explain what’s going on.
The following paragraph may contain some spoilers, and the rest is entirely my interpretation of the film. Use caution. Now, another thing I found interesting is the vast quantities of religious subtext in this movie. The most obvious is the character Sister who is a blatant symbol of religion being a nun and all. At one point, she kneels in front of a scarecrow and begs for god’s forgiveness, the scarecrow very much resembles a crucified Jesus. I thought that was quite clever. In her weakest moment, she finds faith in something. Mister is a bit more complex of a character; he seems to represent a messiah-like figure. He’s a shepherd leading his flock to a different kind of salvation, survival. He leads them to New Eden, a paradise that not many people believe is real. He survived crucifixion and once he sees that Martin and Peggy can take care of themselves he disappears very mysteriously. It seemed kind of similar to Jesus’ ascension into heaven. Belle’s character is a bit of an enigma to me. The entire movie she makes no mention of a father to her baby. Since it’s not addressed it can also be assumed that there is none. I thought it was a nod to the Immaculate Conception. So in my eyes she took a Virgin Mary appearance. Then she died. I think this was a representation of false hope. Clearly her baby couldn’t be the messiah because by the end of the movie we realize that Mister was the messiah all along. Now, I know there was a prequel webisode addressing that very issue, however, I haven’t seen it and it clearly wasn’t mentioned in the movie for a reason. The film is littered with a bunch of other religious icons and symbols; statues of Mary, apocalypse cults, etc. I love movies when they take symbolic approaches to their themes and characters. It gives the overall film a sense of depth. It’s more work than writing a movie without much thought put into it.
I also felt like the casting choices were superb. Nick Damici pulled Mister off well; he really has that quality of a-father-that-cares-about-people-but-isn’t-vocal-or-willing-to-express-it-outwardly. A majority of the movie I kept trying to figure out who played Belle. I knew that I knew who the actress was but couldn’t place my finger on it. It was Danielle Harris; most well know for playing Jamie in Halloween 4 and 5 and Marybeth in the Hatchet franchise. I’m ashamed that I couldn’t recognize her from the latter films since they are probably my favorite slashers. Granted, her work as a kid in the Halloween films was subpar since she was child actor, but now her acting is great and she executes a southern dialect very well. I feel like she’s becoming more a horror icon in contemporary films. She was so immersive in this movie I couldn’t even associate her with the Hatchet series. That’s the answer I’m going with.
Mickle does it again, or should I say he did it before? After all, Stake Land came out before We Are What We Are. It was entertaining yet thought invoking. Rarely the two can blend together well and this was a definite success. Now, I’m seriously questioning my judgment in regards to Mulberry Street. This guy has released two phenomenal movies and maybe I was just blind to his first. When I first saw it, I was eighteen at the time and couldn’t appreciate the finer details, probably. I was really into blood and gore but plots, themes, and cinematography weren’t as much of an interest to me. I definitely know this guy did two films right; odds are the third is awesome too. So, I’ve decided that I’m going to watch Mulberry Street again and see if my opinion changes. I’ve been on the fence about this for a while but Stake Land put the nail in the coffin.
Billy Wayne Martin, HMS
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