Dutch director David Verbeek’s stylish, Taipei-set horror-satire looks fabulous but is too soft on its wealthy characters
Black Mirror meets Succession in this arthouse-y psychological vampire drama, the story of five super-rich millennials – the bored, entitled offspring of global billionaires – who become vampires. The satirical dig here, of course, is that they’re already soulless, uncaring bloodsuckers, even before waking up with actual fangs. But director David Verbeek’s script doesn’t quite wield the scalpel with enough sadistic glee. Instead, this film feels ever-so-slightly sluggish and dour in places.
What Verbeek does brilliantly is to create an eerie parallel world of sterile luxury: glass-walled, penthouse restaurants and gleaming, first-class lounges. The film was shot in the Taiwanese capital Taipei, where the five old
Friends have jetted in. Money can buy whatever they want; but what this lot craves is new experiences. So they have formed an elite club, staging elaborate events and pranks for each other. For his turn Bin-Ray (Philip Juan) fakes his own death.