Cirque du Freak: New seasonal must!

Why, hello there!  It's been quite a while.  Just the other day, I was planning on writing the first post of the Halloween season tomorrow, September 1.  However, I began watching Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant about an hour ago and knew it would be perfect!

Wait.  An hour long movie?  No, I just didn't want to wait until the end in case I forgot something brilliant I wanted to say.  (Not like anything brilliant is going to pop up in this post...)

So Cirque du Freak.  "Isn't it that movie that came out a couple of years ago?"  Yes!  "Oh yeah, I meant to see that in theaters, but..."  Sadly, me too.  Why now?  I was looking for a flick to watch the other day and came across nothing appealing but this (under HBO's onDemand list.)  OF COURSE I had to leave the house about five minutes into but luckily remembered to pick it tonight.  Still haven't finished it yet, though, so I can't give my full analysis of it.

In order to introduce the film (somewhat) properly, here is the film synopsis provided by IMDB:

A young boy named Darren Shan meets a mysterious man at a freak show who turns out to be a Vampire. After a series of events Darren must leave his normal life and go on the road with the Cirque Du Freak and become a Vampire.

That's a bit bleaker than I thought it would be.  Oh well.  That might help illustrate why I never ended up seeing this movie during its theatrical release.

1. The plot from the trailer just didn't grab me enough.
2. John C Reilly has been growing on me as an actor - I truly underappreciated him before.  (Crap! My pause just quite and the onDemand menu came on...)  There were no other actors in the film that would normally be a draw for me - and I had no idea then that Willem Defoe was in it!
3. There must have been something [better] out.  Or I was broke.

Okay, so why do I like it now?  I'm not totally sure, but I'm totally entertained!  I like the look of the film, the feel and even the cast.  So far, there's been nothing too corny, considering the topic at hand.  I even like the score here!  It reminds me of the compositions used in Lemony Snicket.  Wait...  No.  False alarm, just a coincidence.

Oh, and speaking of cast, I challenge any Fringe fans out there to not be irked by Cirque.  (hehe)  There's a character that from his first appearance, I couldn't explain why he seemed so familiar to me.  Ready?  It's the Observer!!  Truly, this is a dorkfest flick.

My point here, though, is to give this movie a try.  Especially and certainly if you love Halloween like I do.  I will be going on Amazon shortly - wait - ah! Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant - and purchasing the film to be a regular Halloween season watch.  It's just a fun film - so far.

Now back to the film!

Afterthoughts: like I said before, this movie is just entertaining in it's ways.  I've commented on nothing of it's structure, so don't analyze what I said; take it for what it is.

This movie has the ending for a sequel, however, I see no notion of a followup film anywhere on IMDB...

Cirque du Freak, the first book of the series in which this film was based on, was published in 2000.  Charlaine Harris released her first book in the Southern Vampire Series in 2001.  (Not to mention Anne Rice's novels.)  The first Twilight series book was published in 2005, with hardly any original content.  And which is making all the money? Simply frustrating.