Stake Land is a
post-apocalyptic drama about sacrifice and survival framed against the backdrop
of an America overrun by vampires. Independently produced, it is directed by
Jim Mickle and stars co-writer Nick Damici as Mister, a middle aged, worn faced
man who becomes a mentor to the recently orphaned young Martin (Connor Paulo)
as they make their way to the possibly mythical New Eden, one of the last major
human outposts away from the vampires. The protagonists’ travelling from one
town to the next as they make their way towards New Eden also provides Stake Land with the opportunity to
develop some road movie dimensions as the travellers engage with a variety of
other characters who help – and hinder – them on their way.
The vampires are
not the traveller’s biggest problem. There are other humans who view the
vampires as some sort of divine blight visited upon the land. Here Mickle delivers
some blood stained religious commentary while skilfully retaining some horror
traits: there are gruesome deaths, lots of blood, staking and suffering. Meanwhile,
the film seems to promote the nuclear family as the one last hope of humankind,
as the travellers first meet a nun (Kelly McGillis, unrecognisable to those who
yearned after her in Top Gun) and a
teenage girl (Danielle Harris). Mickle is intelligent enough to know that the
nuclear family, at least in the horror drama, has run its course, and Stake Land excels at confounding many
expectations. (It does, unfortunately, have one or two bizarre "Karate Kid" training sequences.)
Stake Land is sombre and
violent; it occupies a space somewhere between the blood thirst of 30 Days of Night and the survival-elements
of I am Legend. That said, those
expecting an all-out blood bath with be disappointed as the film’s focus is on
its human characters, not on blindly meeting genre fan expectations. It's a low budget wonder - check out the "making of" and the webisodes on the DVD extras to see exactly how much of a miracle the film is.
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