Yes Stake Land is like Zombieland minus the zombies and comedy. What it does have is lots of vampires.
You still have a very similar premise of a boy on his own randomly encountering a person who becomes his savior and mentor. They seek out a place where there are less vampires and meet up with more strangers along the way.
Stake Land has its ups and downs. Overall the movie works, but its such a somber piece. Society has crumbled and these characters have no real reason to live. The movie is told from the boy’s perspective. He narrates a good chunk of the scenes. These sequences feel like its Sarah Connor talking about the Terminators, but at least there was hope in those films. None of the characters that they meet along the way bring in any comic relief or any other strikingly different personalities.
The reason to watch Stake Land is if you’re a vampire junky and need your fix on beastly blood sucking demons. They’re vicious and will rip your limbs apart. This does make for some good violent moments. In Stake Land the vampires have only one thing on their mind, blood. They don’t actually talk or have any thoughts beyond that. Towards the end of the film they do introduce a vampire that is self aware, but I don’t think that they did enough with this idea.
On this Bluray you do get some pretty interesting special features. Going for the Throat: The Making of Stake Land and the Video Diaries are pretty much without narration. You a thrown into the world of whatever the video is showing you. Watching the crew work for an hour long video might be entertaining for some, but personally I found it boring as I didn’t entirely know what was happening. The Video Diaries are a little bit more informative in that regard as they are centered around specific topics. The feature that stood out to me were the Character Prequels. These 7 short films gave more background information on the main characters before they appeared in the main story of Stake Land. Through the special features you also learn how the vampire outbreak began.
Stake Land is a pretty decent character driven film with lots of blood and violence. Having these special features on the Bluray definitely adds value for anyone who enjoyed the film.
