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n Santiago, Chile, television, experts expound in talking-head shots on the imminent eclipse of the moon, and the spiritual upheaval such an eclipse can bring. Cute Goth girl college student Carmila (Lewin) frets about her paper for Professor Romero (Denegri), who lectures at length about the history of the church and the more extreme beliefs of the past that dictated the necessity of destroying the body in order to save the soul. In Professor Romero's class, Carmila notices a dreamy Goth boy named "M" (Ogalde).
M has two Goth friends with whom he hangs out, Martin (Espinoza) and Elizabeth (Lopéz). M, Martin and Elizabeth, while walking home from campus, fret about getting out of the direct sunlight. They round a corner and a scene ensues that's equal parts Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Federico Fellini's Giulietta degli spiriti and Coppola's Dracula as choreographed by Chuck Jones. As the dust settles from the chaos of the trio's encounter with their formidable adversaries, the three decide that they need a fourth person to join their group.
Carmila is having a very rough time with her overbearing mother (Hopzafel). M approaches her and asks if she's interested in a vampire role-playing game called Eternal Blood. Carmila blows off homework to play. Carmila, M, Elizabeth and Martin accept an invitation to a Goth party from a girl named Vampira (Huilipan). The party is hosted by a kid named Dahmer (Borquez) who, along with his henchman/sidekick Chupacabras (Farías), seems to both terrify and upset M.
As the night of the eclipse draws near, M becomes more erratic and desperate. Are the lives of his friends in peril? Or worse, their souls? Who is Dahmer, really? And what is the riddle of the Eternal Blood game?
A gory glimpse of Goths as human beings
Eternal Blood (Sangre Eterna) is a refreshing twist on the vampire genre and the depiction of Goth kids. After the sideshow representations of Queen of the Damned, it's good to see Goths depicted as human beings and not just Lestat fodder. The reality of middle-class Goth kids fretting about looming term papers lends a credibility to Eternal Blood that's lacking in those movies that provided ammo for SNL's "Goth Talk" sketches; think of the kids flocking into the woods at the end of Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows. That our protagonists must take the bus to get around town is a wonderfully plausible touch.
Such believability is crucial in a film that deals with the fragility of reality. Eternal Blood does with vampires what Henry James' Turn of the Screw did with ghosts (or does it?). Director Olguín and co-writer García yank the audience from what's understood by the characters to be real to what they understand to be unreal, to the point both worlds bleed together (or are revealed to have always been overlapping). Genre fans rigid in their definitions of what's fantasy should avoid Eternal Blood. Others willing to enjoy the "shell game" Olguín and García play with reality should enjoy the film.
This shell game isn't without its perils. A character who witnesses something awful doesn't say much about it, to the police or his friends. Is what he saw unreal to him? Issues like this create nagging inconsistencies at times, but ultimately don't detract from the overall flow of the movie.
The plausibility of Eternal Blood lends much to its very sad and strangely touching climax. In this context, Eternal Blood owes more to Greek tragedy than it does to Anne Rice knockoffs.
As with Another Heaven, Eternal Blood is a foreign horror flick brought to the States and Canada by MTI Home Video and Fangoria magazine; kudos are due again to Fangoria and MTI for making available yet another cool horror movie that'd otherwise be nigh impossible to see in North America. The subtitles on the screener disc I saw had, in the tradition of Hong Kong action movie subtitles, some howler misspellings and grammatical errors—not a big deal, but distracting at times. — Mike
Also in this issue: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Complete Fourth Season DVD and Futurama Series Finale
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