Mild-mannered minister's wife Barbara Crampton (RE-ANIMATOR, CHOPPING MALL) gets bitten by a vampire and all sorts of horrors and dark comedy ensure. What this film does well is it finds a new take on the oft-told vampire tale. The story of Crampton getting bit and slowly turning into a vampire stands in for a story about infidelity and mid-life crisis (she was about to make out with an old boyfriend when she got bit). Crampton finds a new zest for life as a vampire but comes to realize it's at the expense of her 30-year marriage. When she and her husband argue about how she's ashamed of what happened but likes who she is now and how she has changed works perfectly in parallel as if they were discussing her cheating and not wanting to go back to the way things were before. Will she choose a new life with The Master or will she and her husband work together to overcome what happened between her and the vampire? On a pure horror level, I loved the design of the vampire, which reminded me of the rat-like vampire of the 1970s TV mini-series version of Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT (and naming the locale "Kinski County" was a nice nod to NOSFERATU THE VAMIRE (1979). The movie also delivers plenty of fun practical gory special effects. And music by composer Tara Busch is fantastic, and this is her first film credit. Released by Shudder, they are really on a roll for making consistently smart, low-budget horror films. They're like the scrappy underdog version of Blumhouse. JAKOB'S WIFE is not going to be for all tastes, but it is a lot of fun for fans of off-beat horror.
Review of Jakob's Wife
