My Review of "Vampires Vs. The Bronx"

Vampires Vs. The Bronx just came out and I was excited to see it. I'm all about these hokey kid adventure movies probably because of my fond memories of the Goonies. Movies about rag tag gang of kids saving the day is pretty popular now. Probably because everyone else has fond memories of the Goonies as well.

Upon watching the trailer for this movie it definitely reminded me of the movie Attack The Block. I really liked that movie and this movie definitely looked like it had the same vibe as that movie. Hopefully it wouldn't be a scene by scene remake of the same movie since Attack the Block was from the UK.

This movie starts out introducing the main character of the movie Miguel. He has a passion for keeping the neighborhood alive. He loves this bodega and is trying to create a fund raising party to keep the bodega alive. He's helped out with his two friends Bobby and Luis.

Bobby is on the verge of starting to hang out with the wrong group of people. As they're all at the age of discovering themselves he doesn't know what path he's going to go to. It's always enticing to go to the group that you think you will benefit the most at the time.

Then there's Luis. He's basically the nerd of the group and I find that there's always a nerd in the group simply so that someone can explain things to the audience. He's used more of a tool for narration for the audience than an actual character. Then again he's proven to be useful in certain situations but only so slightly.

The three of them are trying to help out Miguel's cause in keeping the bodega alive because there's a massive gentrification situation going on in their neighborhood. A ton of the business owners and residents have been leaving the area because a wealthy property conglomerate seems to be paying them hefty sums to leave. It doesn't help that the area isn't the most savory of places. Well, they say it's a place where people don't care about the people but I honestly think this neighborhood seemed pretty nice. They also made it seem like the neighbors were all a close knit family and you can't really say that for a lot of neighborhoods anywhere. This part was a little lost on me because the place seemed nice.

As a ton of the business owners and residents have been leaving there's also been news that a lot of them have gone missing as well. It's an absurd amount of missing persons and yet no one seems to care.

The two elements of gentrification and missing persons felt more of a social statement in the movie about how the disenfranchised are being ignored and pushed out of their homes only to be forgotten. Even though they've been given favorable amounts to leave they're nowhere to be found afterwards so the money isn't even being given out.

After some investigation, Miguel discovers that not only is his neighborhood being gentrified, but it's being gentrified by evil vampires. He tries to tell everyone but of course everyone's going to think that he's some crazy kid that's off his rocker. His claims are outlandish yet they fit into the mythology to all of Luis' vampire lore. So the kids start to smarten up while the parents are trying to keep them contained.

The movie then becomes a mission for the kids to rid the neighborhood of these vampires. It does have a little of the Attack the Block vibe but it isn't quite as smooth as the aforementioned movie. There's a few faults in this movie.

Unfortunately the acting is a little off. It seems almost like kids just reading lines and reacting. Sort of like you would see if kids were making their own recordings of a movie. You don't see this as often because child actors are getting a lot better now. Still they did a good job in delivering the movie but at times it felt a little off. Those times that it felt off really threw me out of the movie.

This definitely also felt like a long kids TV show. Don't get me wrong. It was still entertaining and definitely geared towards kids but adults can still enjoy this as well. Especially adults that are kids at heart. We know there's a ton of adult children out there and that's why we have so many storylines geared towards a younger demographic.

Overall, this is still an enjoyable movie and I don't think anyone can really complain about it because it's on Netflix. You don't really expect Oscar worthy performances or storyline. You're here to have some fun and this delivers. I have to give this movie a 6.5 out of 10. It's worth a viewing if you're looking for some dumb fun.