When a maniacal southern preacher is bitten by a vampire, and subsequently turned into a vampire, things are bound to get crazy, especially when he thinks his new found immortality and abilities have been given to him by God Himself. One can imagine he will soon start spreading his evil word, recruiting small-town stragglers and people looking for a place to go, and a leader to follow. Next would be to start spreading the word even farther to neighboring towns and states; when a person doesn't submit to vampire way of life, the preacher could just bite them anyway. They would be unstoppable, southern, and downright gothic.
Not all this goes down though. The concept of this movie is good, but either from lack of imagination or poor financing, the story doesn't stretch as far as it should. A maniacal preacher does get bit. He does turn into a more maniacal vampire, who believes God has given him his powers. He does start recruiting the local bumpkins in the small town in which he resides. However, it stops there. The first 30 minutes pack a pretty decent story. The last hour falls flat. The story showed promise, but for whatever reason, we don't escape the few dull sets, and nothing really happens, other than plenty o' some vampire killin'.
And there is a lot of vampire killin'. I take no pleasure in saying that the special effects are probably at the center of this film. At least, it appears that's where most of the money went. They are pretty impressive, too, for a movie of its budget. Campy, fun gore is paramount in campy, fun horror movies. But so are a simple story and goofy characters. The cast in Southern Gothic do a great job at acting as stoic as possible, save for Enoch, the crazy preacher, played by William Forsythe. Other than him, everyone else is so damn humdrum. Hazel, a tough-but-quiet drunk who bounces at the local strip club, doesn't often stray from his emotionless mannequin face. All the other minor characters are equally droll. Forget about the blood, who sucked out all the energy from the townspeople? Combine that with the slow pacing the story offers, and you have a recipe for a rather boring movie.
Not all the effects were mind-blowing, either. More attention should have been paid to the sound effects. A rusty spade being picked up shouldn't make the exact same “shing!” sound effect as every other blade-getting-picked-up sound that we've heard in TV and movies for years. A girl picks up a knife: “shing!” A guy picks up a garden spade: “shing!” A woman takes out car keys from her purse: “shing!” A dog barks: “shing!” Let's put the “shing!” sound effect to rest. Knives and blades don't typically make that sound when picked up. Instead, the audio department should have done something about the the gunfire in the movie, which sounds weak, like it's coming from cap guns. Maybe it's a lame detail to notice, but it's a detail that was indeed noticeable, and if it's enough to remove a viewer from the experience of watching the film, it's an issue.
I had a lot of hope for this movie, especially since its tagline, "Pray for Dawn," is so similar to the tagline of my all-time favorite vampire movie, Near Dark: "Pray for Daylight." It fell horribly short, though. Southern Gothic took itself a little too seriously. Its budget was not much, but a script filled with more fun and interesting scenes is basically free. The effects were impressive, the concept was great, and even though they never fully shined, the cast were a great bunch. Any die-hard vampire-movie lover should probably take a look at this, but try not to get your hopes up.
DVD Bonus Features
Two trailers: an IFC trailer, and director Mark Young's trailer. Both are pretty much the same. Also a seven-minute making-of featurette that goes over a few of the film's more complex special effects scenes. It's pretty interesting, especially since the movie's focal point seemed to be its gory makeup and visual effects.
"Southern Gothic" is on sale May 18, 2010 and is not rated. Horror. Written and directed by Mark Young. Starring William Forsythe, Nicole DuPort, Yul Vazquez, Dani Englander.
