The good news about Stake Land is that it manages to deliver a fairly suspenseful horror tale about hoards of vampires ravaging the globe. The bad news is that it's not very original. If you're not looking for anything groundbreaking, than Director Jim Mickle's Stake Land is a good way for a horror fan to spend 98 minutes.
Stake Land covers territory already paved in many other 'Plague-of-the-undead-spreading-across-the-world' films, like the George Romero Zombie films and The Last man on Earth (remade as Omega Man and I Am Legend.) This time, it's Vampires instead of zombies or mutants who are covering the globe but the formula plays out in the same manner.
The story follows young Martin (Connor Paolo, best known as Eric on Gossip Girl) who's parent are killed by a savage vampire in the early days of the vampire apocalypse. Martin is saved by a vampire-slaying warrior known only as "Mister" (Nick Damici, who co-wrote the script). Mister takes Martin under his wing and they travel across country in their car, slaying vampires and trying to reach the rumored northern sanctuary called New Eden. Several people join them along the way, for varying lengths of time. These allies include an aging nun named Sister Anna (Kelly McGillis from Witness and Top Gun); Willie (Sean Nelson), and a pregnant young girl named Belle (Danielle Harris, who played Michael Myers' intended victim in Halloween 4 : the Return of Michael Myers and Halloween 5.)
The group's journey across country is complicated by human cannibals and a vampire-worshipping cult led by Jebedia (Michael Cerveris) who think that the vamps are doing God's work. When Mister kills two members of the cult, including Jebadia's son, the cult make it their mission to track Mister down and make him suffer.
The plot is basically a serious version of the 2009 Woody Harrelson comedy Zombieland, with vampires instead of zombies. It also has aspects of the excellent Viggo Mortensen film The Road (2009) about a father and son crossing the country after an apocalypse, avoiding cannibals.
Happily, the vampires here are not emo and lovelorn, as many modern vampires are. Sadly, the vampires in this film are indistinguishable from Zombies. They are mindless berserkers who "act from their reptilian brains". They don't speak; they have no discernable personalities, and all they do is attack anything that moves and feed off it. These guys aren't exactly Dracula or Lestat.
There are some decent scares here and the performances are good. Director Mickle manages to give it an epic feel on a relatively low budget. If you don't mind the cookie-cutter plot of a small group of people trying to survive while a mindless army of flesh-eating creatures spreads across the globe, then you should enjoy Stake Land.
