AT DAWN THEY SLEEP

Say what you want about the quality of Brian Paulin's SOV horrors, but there's little doubt that his work is devoted to the terror of undead 'life.' Four years before his zombie patchwork BONE SICKNESS, he set the groundwork with AT DAWN THEY SLEEP. Packed with the vomit-strewn transformation scenes and the drab cinematography that would mark his signature, Brian's approach to body horror is communicated through a narrative that combines gangsters, vampires and sci-fi but doesn't come close to fulfilling its lofty ambitions.

"Ruthless crime lords" Stephen (director Paulin) and Ian (Rich George) are bitten by a pair of voluptuous sluts and taken under the wing of nocturnal creatures Angel and Angelina. At first using his undead abilities to destroy gang rival Billy Rae Douglas and his men, Stephen is turned by a horned demon who reveals that he's being used by the women to wipe out mankind for their own selfish purposes. Given super powers, Stephen tries to wipe out the winged women who gave him the appetite for blood, but tests his life-and-death spanning friendship with Ian to the limit.

Dubbed by one poor Internet writer as an "incredible experience in indy cinema", AT DAWN THEY SLEEP fails to rise above the rut of dismal home movie 'epics'. With a flat aesthetic common to the SOV genre, sound is also a major issue. Offscreen noises are way out of proportion to those in the main frame of action in their loudness, and there is little to distinguish performances. The angels look like soft-core porn stars and Paulin and George resemble students more than "ruthless crime lords." In an interesting twist, Paulin and George convince far more in their roles as vampires. Listless and lethargic, George is quite suited in the pallid guise of vampire, and Paulin - with his catlike features and long, ginger hair - fits the part of the creature seeking prey.

Filmmakers have to work around the limitations of the production, but Paulin tries to make too much of very little and falls short of impressing. Humour is admittedly gleaned from the vampire/gangster crossover, as when the vampiric duo battle in a warehouse with Billy Rae Douglas - with guns. Stephen answers Ian's "You realise we don't need these" with an amusing "Yeah, but it's fun." That the rivalries extend from beyond the grave (Billy Rae also comes back) creates an interesting range of situations that come close to sustaining viewer interest, but the RESERVOIR DOGS references wear thin. The tough guy posturing - in which the men basically screw their faces up, drink beer and say "Fuck" is pathetic.

Paulin's self-made mythology not only covers too many bases, but is plain daft. The angels, apparently, are 'jealous of humans' since God allowed them to inherit the earth (cue plenty of prosaic 'God did this, God did that' discussions), and so plan to wipe out mere mortals with the vampire contagion. The horned demon is an economy version of Tim Curry's character in LEGEND, complete with theatrical, grandstanding gestures that does little but emphasise its creakiness. Its lumbering presence fails to flatter the production and its impact on the narrative does little but account for a few fights between super-powered creatures of the night that would be better suited to a comic book or a feature that is more professional and better funded.

Review by Matthew Sanderson