Per Matt
Los Angeles is full of suckers — whether they’re of the bloodsucking variety or not. Seems like a natural setting for the recent Netflix release, Night Teeth. The film begins with the three unspoken rules of the vampire-human existence: Don’t let humans know they exist. Don’t feed on the unwilling. And never, ever enter Boyle Heights without permission. Seems pretty simple, actually. Until it’s not.
A truce that has endured for three generations ends when the girlfriend of Jay (played by Raúl Castillo) gets abducted. Little does Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) know about his big brother’s importance concerning the supernatural treaty. He volunteers to take over the limousine-driving duties for the evening, so Jay can search for her. But the pair of Beverly Hills party girls who need escorting may have blood in the water for him and many others before the sun rises…
I really liked the premise of this movie: Five leaders control the greater Los Angeles area — many of them vampires. But when the uneasy working relationship disappears, survival is the upmost importance and everything else is secondary.
“Once you’re gone, the city’s just one fat neck, waiting to be sucked…”
As our driver falls headfirst into this blood-soaked world, we get glimpses of an exclusive hotel where these night terrors feed, which absolutely intrigued me. What feels like an homage to The Continental of the John Wick franchise doesn’t last very long, unfortunately. I wanted more of the storyline to be centered here instead of moving on. Oh, well.
I did enjoy our female antagonists. Lucy Fry (Zoe) and Debby Ryan (Blaire) looked like they were having too much fun with their roles. The movie’s cameos were pretty good, too (Sydney Sweeney, Megan Fox). The snazzy style and cinematography of this underworld looked killer (A tapped keg of blood was also a nice touch to feed these monsters.), even if there weren’t a whole lot of action-filled battles taking place.
What I didn’t like: This film’s rules for killing an immortal. I was kinda confused. Sunlight always does the trick, but knives will do it sometimes (other times the killers are self-healing eternals). The mythology can’t be constantly changing. That’s a huge problem. Also, there wasn’t a whole lot of action and the dialogue wasn’t superb.
“We just gave those boys the best suck they’re ever gonna get…”
Maybe there weren’t a lot of battles because of the film’s budget. Listed around $22 million, it’s possible most of that money went toward set pieces — they do look great, by the way! Maybe the filmmakers had no intention of competing with big-named titles within the genre. Or Netflix wasn’t going to pay for it.
Regardless, I enjoyed this blood-dripping entry for what it is: Lower-budgeted genre entertainment found on a streaming service.
Night Teeth isn’t the worst thing ever, in terms of vampire movies. I would not rank it within my Top 10 films of the genre, but I did find it entertaining, although somewhat predictable at times. There’s some pain, but its bite is somewhat pleasing.