Less ideologically offensive than “Night Drive” but easily more vacuous and boring, director Christopher-Lee dos Santos’s “Eternity” is a vampire romance so tedious that you begin wishing for the fast paced antics of “The White Ribbon”. I am grateful for “Skoonheid” and “Roepman” and embarrassed for this film. In “Eternity, Andre Frauenstein stars as Billy (the name is a set-up for a terrible joke late in the film; it’s as forced as the character’s hair, which makes him look like a forlorn Goku in search of an Egoli Dragonball), a vampire who spends his evenings parkouring around Johannesburg with his buddies. After one night on the town (its rooftops, staircases etc), it is one of his friends who channels the great philosophers to make the seismic observation: “It is almost daybreak”. I think the rising sun gave him a clue, as it would Billy, but Billy stands there nodding solemnly.
Allow me to pause for a moment. Here are creatures that have obtained immortality and spend their time practising parkour. Something tells me they’re not doing it simply because they’ve already worked their way through the Western literary canon.
Life as a vampire seems uncomplicated enough, until a scientist (poor Ian Roberts, in another of his appearances as Ian Roberts-as-Character X) discovers a formula that could give vampires the ability to walk in direct sunlight without turning to ash. An emergency Vampire Board Meeting is called, where evil Borlak (David James) turns the tables on the more moderate current leader (Gys de Villiers) to become the alpha vamp. This scene exists only so that the film can claim to have a Vampire Board Meeting scene, which most contemporary vampire movies have. With the exception of the Big Bad Borlak, none of the other characters really make a functional appearance ever again. The dialogue throughout the film is ridiculously leaden and generic, but this scene is a particularly effective indicator of what’s to come.
One night, Billy meets Jenny (Rikki Brest) in a night club. May I venture that Brest (now now) was cast for her body, and not her acting abilities or strong verbal presence. If there’s not blood or parkour on the screen, there’s cleavage, and the camera spends minutes on Brest’s body in an early scene where she’s trying on different outfits for her night out. It’s so gratuitous it should be hilarious, but it’s more boring than anything else.
It is Jenny’s birthday, but her mother (Brumilda van Rensburg) does not seem to know about it. So Jesse and Billy celebrate by drinking and dancing. Another pause: Billy drinks blood. When asked what’s in his flask, he says something to the effect of “It’s some kind of Bloody Mary” and then follows up with a Stephanie Meyer-sized clunker: “It’s an acquired taste”. Anyhoo, so the Big Bad Borlak kidnaps Jenny to get his hands in the formula since Ian Roberts-as-Character X is her dad. (By this point - and I may be wrong because at some stage my mind wandered and I started thinking about Del Toro and Hogan’s “The Strain” and Cronin’s superior “The Passage”, which is a sweeping epic featuring vampires – the film reached the halfway mark, and nothing had really happened yet.) Billy and company set off to rescue Jenny and save… Save what? There’s no integration between the worlds of the vampires and the citizens of Johannesburg, so it’s cinematically unclear what precisely is at stake except for some individual fates.
I should mention that Hlomla Dandala co-stars as a policeman, Joe Kau. Dandala is better than this material, and all he does is say his lines, point his gun a lot of times, and appear on the scene when necessary. Model turned actress Christina Storm appears as Billy’s former lover, Lisa, who may be a bit jealous of her ex-boyfriend’s newly acquired mortal girlfriend. Storm, who also recently appeared in a horror of a different nature in “Ek Lief Jou”, is a dreadful actress, plain and simple. She brings only her body to a role that at least demands convincing grunting and groaning. Oh, the noises. These are some of the noisiest vampires I have ever encountered. They hiss and snarl and hiss and snarl and hiss and there I was again, thinking of “The Passage”. It really becomes comical. The blonde female vampire who lugs Jenny around is a particularly inspired hisser.
After the film reveals a big twist - a development even Oedipus would see coming, eyes or no eyes – the film predictably climaxes with a battle, followed by an ending so abrupt and impotent you cannot help but laugh again. “Eternity” is a bloody mess, and proves once more that a bad screenplay results in a bad movie, regardless of how many gunfights or parkour scenes or shots of heaving bosoms you put in.
Allow me to pause for a moment. Here are creatures that have obtained immortality and spend their time practising parkour. Something tells me they’re not doing it simply because they’ve already worked their way through the Western literary canon.
Life as a vampire seems uncomplicated enough, until a scientist (poor Ian Roberts, in another of his appearances as Ian Roberts-as-Character X) discovers a formula that could give vampires the ability to walk in direct sunlight without turning to ash. An emergency Vampire Board Meeting is called, where evil Borlak (David James) turns the tables on the more moderate current leader (Gys de Villiers) to become the alpha vamp. This scene exists only so that the film can claim to have a Vampire Board Meeting scene, which most contemporary vampire movies have. With the exception of the Big Bad Borlak, none of the other characters really make a functional appearance ever again. The dialogue throughout the film is ridiculously leaden and generic, but this scene is a particularly effective indicator of what’s to come.
One night, Billy meets Jenny (Rikki Brest) in a night club. May I venture that Brest (now now) was cast for her body, and not her acting abilities or strong verbal presence. If there’s not blood or parkour on the screen, there’s cleavage, and the camera spends minutes on Brest’s body in an early scene where she’s trying on different outfits for her night out. It’s so gratuitous it should be hilarious, but it’s more boring than anything else.
It is Jenny’s birthday, but her mother (Brumilda van Rensburg) does not seem to know about it. So Jesse and Billy celebrate by drinking and dancing. Another pause: Billy drinks blood. When asked what’s in his flask, he says something to the effect of “It’s some kind of Bloody Mary” and then follows up with a Stephanie Meyer-sized clunker: “It’s an acquired taste”. Anyhoo, so the Big Bad Borlak kidnaps Jenny to get his hands in the formula since Ian Roberts-as-Character X is her dad. (By this point - and I may be wrong because at some stage my mind wandered and I started thinking about Del Toro and Hogan’s “The Strain” and Cronin’s superior “The Passage”, which is a sweeping epic featuring vampires – the film reached the halfway mark, and nothing had really happened yet.) Billy and company set off to rescue Jenny and save… Save what? There’s no integration between the worlds of the vampires and the citizens of Johannesburg, so it’s cinematically unclear what precisely is at stake except for some individual fates.
I should mention that Hlomla Dandala co-stars as a policeman, Joe Kau. Dandala is better than this material, and all he does is say his lines, point his gun a lot of times, and appear on the scene when necessary. Model turned actress Christina Storm appears as Billy’s former lover, Lisa, who may be a bit jealous of her ex-boyfriend’s newly acquired mortal girlfriend. Storm, who also recently appeared in a horror of a different nature in “Ek Lief Jou”, is a dreadful actress, plain and simple. She brings only her body to a role that at least demands convincing grunting and groaning. Oh, the noises. These are some of the noisiest vampires I have ever encountered. They hiss and snarl and hiss and snarl and hiss and there I was again, thinking of “The Passage”. It really becomes comical. The blonde female vampire who lugs Jenny around is a particularly inspired hisser.
After the film reveals a big twist - a development even Oedipus would see coming, eyes or no eyes – the film predictably climaxes with a battle, followed by an ending so abrupt and impotent you cannot help but laugh again. “Eternity” is a bloody mess, and proves once more that a bad screenplay results in a bad movie, regardless of how many gunfights or parkour scenes or shots of heaving bosoms you put in.
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