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I’ve been looking forward to and finally rented out this New Zealander film www.perfect-creature.com. It’s not cyberpunk by half but the film clearly fits into the steampunk genre and maaaaaaybe bio-punk genre in an old school Dr. Moreau sense. The best way to describe the plot is to compare it to my own film Toronto Cybercide except replace cyborgs with vampires. It’s actually kind of eerie how many parallels you can draw between the two.
In a nutshell: The world is very different because of the acceptance of vampires as scientific fact, a step up in evolution, and not creatures of myth. They are not parasites in the traditional sense in that, why they need human blood to survive centuries of breeding have left their own blood with the ability to heal many wounds and cure many diseases. So an exchange is drawn up whereby normal human willing go to church to donate blood and the Brothers, as the hemovores are known, ‘bless’ people with their own blood. Also thanks to their long live the Brother have become custodians, of a sort, of human knowledge.
So… in this world one of the Brothers named Edgar goes rogue and, at first, begins killing humans and drinking blood directly from them. The Brothers are unable to maintain cover when someone is killed in broad daylight and Silus, the Brother responsible for tracking Edgar down, is forced to team up with plucky human policewoman Lilly and her hard nosed partner Jones. They manage to capture Edgar but the magnitude of his threat is exposed when it’s learned that Edgar is infected with a disease that transmittable to humans, turning them into 28 Days Later style infected before dying a gruesome death. Edgar escapes and the protagonists must set aside their own differences to deal with the combined threat of the plague, Edgar’s grudge against Silus and his lust for Lilly.
So… awright. This is a cyberpunk forum, what you guys want to see…. hm. The background of the world is interesting in that there is a strict dichotomy between two classes of a normal human underclass and a post-human… I wouldn’t called them ‘ruling’ class but the Brothers live a privileged life. There’s mention of an ‘Empire’ and a ‘Queen’ but you’re left with the distinct impression that these are human institutions that the Brothers don’t answer to but must live in harmony with (Church and State). The years they have lived have left them distant from humanity, however; they are not evil but sometimes amoral, with Edgar being an extreme example of ends-justifying the means. The threat of a race war is mentioned and the tensions are present, manly in the role of tough talking Officer Jones, but never really brought into the light. The idea of bio-weapons, “all the bad things”, are brought into play and you’re also left with a distinct impression that the Brothers maintain struck bans on genetic engineering not only to keep the populations safe but to keep their power-base solid.
The setting itself is a cool hybrid of dirty colonial England, Tesla technology (in the form of bulky tasers), 50’s style televisions and radios, WWII combat gear and renaissance clockwork (in the form of Silus’ pistol). There’s a dirigible seen in several CGI cityscape scenes but it doesn’t figure into the plot at all or even acknowledged. The atmosphere is smoky and dreary but it’s not over the top gothic as you’d be used to Anne Rice vamp movies, rather something you’d get from a Jack the Ripper era film. Likewise, don’t expect any Underworld or Blade style action scenes; there is some fighting, decent actually, but not enough to make or break the film.
My verdict? I enjoyed it overall. I like how Silus is handled as neither robot nor predator but someone outside of humanity looking in; he’s got this quizzical-cat look whenever faced with some human behaviors that I found rather endearing. There are some plot gaps that require you to pay attention to the explosion scenes and sort of back-track the logic. Also when the titular perfect creature shows up it’s handled rather weakly, like the writer forgot the sequence in the first draft and plopped it back in at the end of the flick “uh, yea, sorry, this was the point of the movie… more explained in the sequel!”.
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