MoonChild

Moon Child (2003)

The movie opens as the year 2001 hits. We are introduced to a couple of vampires and watch as the elder decide to watch the sunrise, leaving his apprentice on his own. Then the movie makes it’s first jump into a future version of Japan (I think they never really make it obvious) where a young boy stumbles upon a man that smolders when the sunlight hits him (the vampire). The man is suicidal and tells the boy to leave him, but instead he drags him to safety, where the mysterious man saves the boy and his friends from a gangster there to recover some money they stole from him. It is revealed to the boys that the man is a vampire, who impressed by the boy’s lack of fear decides to stick around. The movie then makes it’s second jump into the future where the boy and his vampire pal are ripping off crime families of their cash. The meet up with another man and meet his sister. More violence happens and the newcomers find out about the vampire, who leaves town. Then the third jump in time happens the friends are now in different gangs, the vampire is in jail (until he escapes to head home), and everyone not a bloodsucker dies. The fourth and final jump in time happens where the vampire is seeing the daughter of his dead friends off to college. Seeing her off safely he heads off to watch the sunrise and turn into a pile of dust.

This is one of those confusing movies that never decides what kind of movie that it wants to be. Is it an action movie? Well sometimes it is so yes. But then it changes gears and becomes a drama involving a couple of young men that start off as friends, but drift away from each other. So yeah then it is a drama. But then the movie tries to be funny and have one of the characters stoned and seeing flying fish floating around him. But understand it isn’t trying to be a funny action movie, or a drama with some funny moments. No the movie shifts constantly and jarringly between these genres. Then you get to add in that the movie jumps in time not once, but four times into the future without warning. In fact the only way that the audience knows time has passed is because they flash the date up. Oh and if that weren’t’ bad enough one of the characters is a vampire, which just makes things that much more difficult to follow. Now there is an ongoing story about a couple of friends and their families that runs throughout but by the time the movie was over I was utterly frustrated and had given up any attempts at following that story. Speaking of the ending it is so predictable and will only be dramatic to the 12-year-old Twilight reading members of the audience.

The movie is shot on digital. It has a few terrible scenes with slow motion bullets, and tries to be a John Woo movie with some of the shootouts. It fails miserably. There isn’t much with the vampire and their demises look like poorly rendered CGI, which is exactly what it is.

This isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Some of the acting is okay and the story isn’t too bad. But it suffers from an ambitious story line that never decides what it is and tries to pull off effects with CGI that shouldn’t have been attempted. If you really like Japanese movies or love vampires then you might get something out of this one. But I can’t really see the appeal.

1 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer