A group of rowdy teenagers break into an old mortuary looking for a good time when they find themselves stalked and killed off by the owner whom is a very real vampire.
When things just go too well for some time - it can only go down-hill from there and that's just the case with the 3rd entry in the Masters of Horror series, season 2. Hooper's film opened the season and kicked some serious ass, and after that came Landis with his excellent Family, but then it all went down the drain with Dickerson's The V Word, written by Garris. At least the 2nd season had a much better start than the 1st season had, but at the same time it also raised the expectations for what was about to come - and when The V Word hit, it wasn't without that one felt some major disappointment. The V Word is about vampires, and while that may sound cool to some, I can tell you that it was not very cool at all. The film had a whole heap of problems with everything from forced dialogue to predictable scares and I'm pretty sure I've seen it all before somewhere.
The film starts off with these two characters that are Kerry and Justin. Kerry sits and plays X-box 360 while Justin is being angry at his dad - two typical teenagers that share some forced dialogue in Justin's boy-room. Then Justin gets this brilliant idea that the two should head to the local funeral home and check out a recently deceased body. Since that sounds like fun, they decide to do so and in there of course a few things happen that are all a little too predictable. This is the thing right here and that is that everything is so freakin obvious - it's a horror movie, they're in a funeral home, there are dead people laying around everywhere, there are some bloody sheets here and there - you don't need to be Sherlock to know that something will happen - pretty much how it's gonna happen, and when it will happen. While it's pretty much impossible to be completely original these days, at least try and do things a little bit different, if for nothing else, because this is like watching a horror movie that you pretty much seen hundreds of times before, just that it has different characters and a different setting.
 
After been walking around among dead bodies that are laying in a room, suddenly one wakes up and good damn is he frightening! No, not really, it's Michael Ironside and he's a nasty fellow that bites one of the boys in the neck. From there on the story moves forward and that has a vampire theme to it that you'll find out more about if you see it.
The film looks all right, but what it deals with is something that is old and most of all boring. The scares are really nowhere to be found and what else the film offers you've probably seen somewhere else before. Jodelle Ferland from Silent Hill fame shows up in the movie as well, but without really adding anything to it. I know I'm complaining a little too much maybe, but I honestly had a really hard time sitting through this film for the fact that it was predictable and didn't offer anything new, different or interesting for that matter. The story was tired, the kids were pretty stereotyphed teenagers from ther MTV-generation that had some bad dialogue going early on in the film. Luckily, things picked up with the next episode that was Brad Anderson's Sounds Like.
The V Word did unfortunately not even come close to the two previous entries in the Masters of Horror series. It was predictable, lacked scares, didn't feature any character development whatsoever and almost made me fall asleep. Too bad.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: The V Word
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Ernest R. Dickerson
WRITING CREDITS: Mick Garris
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Arjay Smith, Branden Nadon, Michael Ironside
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 60 min
RATING: 2/10
Masters of Horror (S02E03): The V Word Website/IMDB Click here
Masters of Horror (S02E03): The V Word Trailer Click here
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