The Vampire Next Door (2024) – Film Review
Not by any means a typical horror movie, The Vampire Next Door is an entertaining film that’s not lacking in humour and combines aspects of romantic comedies with coming-of-age movies. It’s a fun film where a little blood is shed here and there but the special effects don’t go over the top.
As the name suggests, the film shares certain aspects with The Girl Next Door (2004), now a cult classic. The Vampire Next Door also puts me in mind of The Party Animal (1984), a college comedy fantasy film that escaped mainstream attention. Hopefully, The Vampire Next Door will be better received.
The central character is a young man called Cameron (Alex Matthews) who has his fair share of problems such as a mom who keeps criticising his diet and a father who is pressurizing him to decide what he wants to do with his life. A bigger problem by far, Cameron is still madly in love with his high school crush, Diane (Bella Chadwick), who looks like a Playboy centrefold, but he can’t pluck up the courage to tell her how he feels. His life becomes doubly complicated when a sexy, young vampire called Victoria (Jessica Ferguson) moves into the house next door.
In common with The Girl Next Door, when Cameron looks out his bedroom window and sees his new neighbour undressing, he can’t resist the temptation to dim the lights and enjoy the view.
However, when he gets busted, Victoria doesn’t just stride across the street and knock on the house door, she appears in his room and asks him if he likes watching her undress.
Strangely unphased by her ability to teleport into his room, Cameron asks Victoria to leave but she proves to be hard to get rid of. She needs a ride and threatens to tell Cameron’s parents about their son’s voyeuristic activities if he doesn’t drive her to where she needs to be. So starts an interesting and unusual friendship.
Cameron drives Victoria to an industrial unit, where a man opens the door for her and lets her inside. Sometime later the man comes dashing out begging for help. Victoria follows him outside to Cameron’s car , where he is pounding on the window. She then kills him by ripping a chunk out of his neck with her teeth. Looking at her suddenly veiny face and all the blood around her mouth, Cameron realizes he has a vampire living next door.
Now that he has earned Victoria’s trust, what Cameron thought was going to be a one-time gig becomes something more when she forces him to agree to be her driver on future hunting trips.
The second kill is more messy than the first and Cameron has to contend with the sight of Victoria licking the blood from her fingers and around her lips. Later that evening, feeling she owes Cameron an explanation, Victoria appears in his room again, this time in his bed minus her clothes.
Far from being the murderous creature he initially took her for, it turns out Victoria is killing vampires from the clan that killed her boyfriend, who was also her creator. She has been hunting them for over 200 years.
When Cameron finds out he is helping Victoria slay vampires instead of aiding and abetting murders, he becomes strangely excited by his new position as her aide. However, most of the vampires she has tracked to the town are young and easy to kill. The last vampire on her list, a woman, is as old as her and will be more challenging to dispatch. However, she is the one who killed Victoria’s master so she does not intend to back down.
The Vampire Next Door is one of the best films I have seen in a long time. At 1 hr 50 minutes, it’s quite long but I liked the characters and storyline so much I would have been okay with it being a little longer.
Although I’m guessing the film was produced on a limited budget, The Vampire Next Door doesn’t come across like a typical indie movie. It’s got a good storyline, is well shot, and even though most of the cast members don’t have more than four films under their belts, the quality of the acting is first-rate.
Alex Mathews’ previous credits include a few short films and an appearance on the Unearthed Tapes Sketch Show. The Vampire Next Door appears to be his first feature-length film but his performance comes across as very polished and some of the faces he pulls along with his, at times, wild antics gave me the giggles more than once. If you want to be entertained rather than shocked, this film could be right up your street. Although there are a few bloody scenes, they are few and far between and the vampires in this film are more likely to thrill you than scare you, so The Vampire Next Door may not sit well with viewers who may be expecting a standard horror film.
Jessica Ferguson is well cast as Victoria, Her only other acting credit is for a short film called Cobra City but The Vampire Next Door would not be the same without her. She could have been made for the role of the sexy bad-ass vampire who takes Cameron under her wing, helping him gain greater self-confidence, and even going so far as to help him develop his fighting skills when he has a run-in with a couple of guys who have been bullying him since high school.
Although Victoria is seriously attractive and comes on strong with him more than once, Cameron’s heart always remains true to Diane so, as with he and Diane, their relationship never develops beyond a friendship.
You don’t have to get too far into this film before there are signs that Diane may be patiently waiting for Cameron to make the first move. That never happens but through a combination of circumstances, he ends up trying to help his friend Martin (Andrew Larkin) make amends for standing Diane up at the school prom and earn a second chance with her.
It’s fair to say the plot has some interesting and unexpected twists and turns. Plenty is going on. Victoria successfully tracks down her last victim, Martin gets to go on a date with Diane, and, as for Cam, he does a lot of growing up, decides what he wants to do with his life, and learns some valuable life lessons.