Written and directed by Onur Tukel
USA, 2014
New York-based artist Onur Tukel wrote, directed, edited, and stars in the Tribeca premiere Summer of Blood, but don’t confuse him with Tommy Wiseau, because this isn’t The Room. It’s a humorous, competently made, completely effective horror-comedy. It won’t light your world on fire, but it’s a perfectly entertaining hour and a half at the movies.
If one were forced to describe this film in two words, they would be “hipster vampires.” Eric (Tukel) is a bearded, messy-haired, flannel-wearing layabout who, in the film’s opening scene, manages to change his girlfriend’s mind from “willing to propose marriage” to “utterly hating his guts” in the space of a few indifferent sentences. It seems like things are going no better at his dead-end job or with the women he tries to date next, but one little bite on the neck from a mysterious stranger will turn his entire life on its head.
Now, let there be no doubt: this film was done on the cheap. There may not be even 1- locations. The final scene re-uses a character for no significant reason, except possibly because Tukel ran out of available actresses. Having said that, Tukel creates an effective vampire movie on his limited budget. At every moment when Eric’s curtain of snark and sarcasm should drop away and the arterial blood should start spraying, it works.
The only thing that comes close to not working is Eric himself. If Tukel were not a New Yorker, Eric would appear to be an inexcusable sketch-drawing of New York cool. He almost is anyway; Eric’s laconic lack of empathy moves past pastiche and well towards caricature as it becomes clear that he doesn’t care about anything. In some scenes, audiences will see in Eric a number of jerks that they’ve met in their lives; in other scenes, Tukel goes well beyond the realm of recognizable human behavior just for the sake of a middling laugh.
The only real problem with Summer of Blood is that, when Tukel goes to those far-out places, the best he can get are middling laughs. This simply isn’t belly-laugh comedy. One big comic theme of this film is that Eric is turned into a vampire and becomes a better person as a result, but he doesn’t become so much better that he’s worth cheering for. It’s not an unfunny film – virtually every joke lands – but there’s just something about Eric’s thorough disinterest in his fellow man that makes it difficult to uncork a huge laugh at his exploits.
Still, if there is any truth in the old adage that a great movie has two good scenes and no bad scenes, then Tukel has made it halfway there: Summer of Blood has no bad scenes. It delivers the most amiable, grin-inducing vampire film of the year, and while most comedies aspire to greater things, “amiable” is not a bad start.
— Mark Young