Graphic by Gabby Gagnon ‘24
By Rose Cohen ’22
Arts & Entertainment Editor
In Netflix’s new original vampire thriller film, “Night Teeth,” viewers meet the main character, Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), a broke college student whose future goals include succeeding as a music producer and buying his grandmother a house. Benny’s fairly average life, defined by writing academic papers for his classmates and skateboarding around his hometown, takes a turn for the worse when he begs his older brother, Jay (Raúl Castillo), who works as a chauffeur, to let him play the role of driver for one night. From there, Benny begins chauffeuring Blaire (Debby Ryan) and Zoe (Lucy Fry), a pair of sultry vampire friends interested in attending several lavish parties in Los Angeles with the intent of wreaking havoc. While “Night Teeth” shows promise by showcasing a star-studded cast — Debby Ryan, Lucy Fry and Megan Fox, to name a few — and attempting to feature chemistry between star-crossed lovers Benny and Blaire, it falls flat, mainly due to its nonsensical dialogue, lack of exciting action and unimaginative scenes that are in desperate need of some plot twists.
Within the first few minutes of “Night Teeth,” Blaire, the nicer of Benny’s two passengers, sets up the movie’s plot by telling viewers everything they need to know about why the bloodsucking creatures live in the wealthy areas of Southern California. She explains that vampires and humans struck up a truce in order to maintain peace after a long history of violence between the two parties. “To this day, there are some who still uphold the truce, who keep our secret,” she narrates. “As long as we stick to the three rules. Don’t let humans know we exist, don’t feed on the unwilling and never ever enter Boyle Heights without permission.”
After Blaire’s foreboding narration, a predictable event occurs: Victor (Alfie Allen), a rebellious vampire lord tired of abiding by the truce, enters Boyle Heights and kidnaps Jay’s girlfriend. The film contains few surprising twists and turns after the abduction, but viewers would be doing themselves a favor by logging out of the streaming platform, choosing to never again return to “Night Teeth.”
Even Fox, known for her role as the titular character in the supernatural horror “Jennifer’s Body,” deemed by Vox as “a feminist cult classic,” cannot save “Night Teeth” from its faults. Fox, who appears for one scene as a rich, sassy vampire, brought promising horror movie experience, but even she could not breathe life into the poorly-written script. During the short scene she appears in, she delivers a handful of cringeworthy lines, one of which includes, “Do you think I don’t get frustrated? Do you think that when my pool boy leaves a leaf in the pool, that I don’t wanna string him upside down and suck him dry?” The double entendre and the “pool boy” example do nothing for the scene, especially since they occur when viewers are supposed to find Fox’s character threatening. This line distracts from the serious nature of the scene, instead providing a cheap laugh and taking away any semblance of terror.
If there was another element of the film that held any promise, it was the blossoming relationship between Benny and Blaire. After the long history of compelling romantic relationships between humans and vampires in the horror genre, seen in vampire films and shows like “Twilight” and “The Vampire Diaries,” it would have been interesting to see how the pair’s relationship played out. But poorly written dialogue keeps audiences from clinging on to the romance. In one scene, Blaire further explains the truce to Benny after he fails to run away from her and Zoe. Then, she tells him, “You think majoring in economics is gonna solve all your problems?” The lines have little to do with the scene, do not establish any chemistry between the characters and the joke — if one can even call it that — simply doesn’t land.
Many of the film’s scenes highlight the soft aesthetics of vibrant pinks, purples and blues, but even captivating shots sprinkled with fluorescent lighting cannot hide uninspired scenes lacking any exciting action. At one point, the head member of the night legion, looking to take down the vampires, tells his henchmen to attack Blaire and Zoe. Once again, a predictable event occurs — Benny, who, for some clichéd reason feels the need to protect his captors, grabs a glass bottle and smashes it against the head of the leader of the night legion. Although the scene relies heavily on flashing lights, moving kaleidoscope images and cool-toned colors, it plays out exactly as one would expect and adds nothing new to the plot of the film.
The dialogue in “Night Teeth” highlights the kind of cheesy, dull screenwriting that should not have a place in the horror genre. Scenes are often full of clichés, and it’s hard to imagine any viewer becoming excited by the events unfolding on screen. With a cast full of talented actors and the presence of the timeless cinema trope of forbidden love, “Night Teeth” shows potential, but it ultimately fails as a vampire film because it possesses more cringeworthy moments than creepy or gory ones, which often define the vampire horror genre.