Starring: Eddie Murphy, Angela Bassett, Allen Payne, Kadeem Hardison, and John Witherspoon
Grade: B
Vampire in Brooklyn is worth seeing for Eddie Murphy’s performance alone. He’s unexpectedly good as the wicked and undead vampire villain. Though the movie as a whole may not knock your socks off, there are a lot of positives that make this film much better than people may like to admit.
Summary
With his narration through the opening credits, vampire Maximillian (Murphy) tells us that the race of vampires was driven from Egypt. Most went to the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania, but Max and others traveled south through Africa and over the Atlantic to an island in the Bermuda Triangle. There, they settled for centuries feasting on travelers, until hunters chased them out again. Max escaped on his own. Now, his only chance of survival is to find the one known offspring of his tribe that had been born in a foreign land. This woman lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Julius Jones (Hardison) and his uncle Silas Green (Witherspoon), who works at a dockyard in Brooklyn, watch TV after hours. They are interrupted by a ship crashing directly into the dock and halfway into the building the two are hanging at. Julius runs away to his girlfriend’s house, but Silas goes and investigates the boat, only to find dead bodies all over the place. As he screams and runs, he trips. A wolf appears and runs off the boat, transforming into a man. This man is Maximillian. Shortly after, Julius gets thrown out of his girlfriend’s apartment and is immediately spotted by some Italian gangsters he owes money to. He gets chased into an alley and after the two are about to kill Julius, Max appears. He tries to give them some tips, but they pass him off as some crazy person and shoot him several times. Max gets right back up and rips one guy’s heart out of his chest and kills the other. He tells Julius to wait up for him, but Julius runs away soon after Max kills the second guy. Eventually, Max catches up to him and explains that he likes Julius because he’s a liar, a cheat, and a thief. Because of this, he makes Julius his “ghoul” by biting his own finger and dripping the blood onto Julius’s tongue. Now, Julius will slowly decompose in appearance while also working as a loyal servant to Max. With Julius now in tow, Max explains to him that he needs help finding his special woman. She is a half-blooded vampire, though she is unaware of the fact.
Detective Rita Veder (Bassett) and her good friend and partner Justice (Payne) get called to the dockyard to investigate the crime scene. As Rita goes inside the boat, their captain talks to Justice about Rita, asking how Rita’s been doing since her mother died in a mental institution months ago.
The captain is not very patient about Rita’s progress to say the least.
Next, Justice goes to talk to Silas about what he saw, but he’s not buying the story about seeing a wolf turn into a man. Max and Julius show up at the scene too. Max needs his coffin, but it’s on the boat. Meanwhile, Rita falls into the lower deck of the ship, finds the coffin, opens it, and freaks out after seeing a woman inside that reacts to her. Max goes inside to feast on Rita. However, after realizing she’s the one he’s looking for, he quickly gets out of there. She chases him but to no avail. Rita tells Justice about the coffin inside the boat but when they go back in there, it’s gone, and he looks at her like she’s crazy. He does find a severed human ear though.
That’s a decent consolation prize.
Julius, now dragging the coffin, takes Max back to his apartment because Silas is the landlord and rent is pretty cheap. However, Silas approaches the both of them pretty quickly and triples the rent to house Max, who Julius tells Silas is his new boss that needs to lay low for a while. Seeing that sunlight is almost coming up, Max tosses Silas some valuable gold coins, so Silas welcomes him and leaves, no questions asked. As they settle in, Julius starts to get on Max’s nerves, so he tells him a few things.
- Never sit on his coffin.
- He wants to find the girl tonight.
- He hates mirrors.
He then launches Julius into a mirror, breaking it. Elsewhere, Rita goes to sleep but has some nightmarish visions that wake her up in the morning. She goes to work at the department and talks about the weird feelings she’s been having about this new case with Justice, though he’s not interested in hearing it. Their captain approaches the two and tells them about the two murders that happened close by (that Max was also responsible for). Also, the university couldn’t read the ship’s log, so they sent it to Dr. Zeko (Zakes Mokae). In disguise as the janitor at the police department, Julius hears it all. That night, Julius shows up with a limo he stole from a funeral to take Max over to Zeko’s. His appearance is slowly worsening, and we start to see the effects of his “ghouldom”, like one of his hands falling off. Silas notices this but just gives him shit for it. As Julius drives Max, Max explains how he can’t just bite Rita and get it over with. In this situation, she must give in to him voluntarily. As Rita and Justice park and head over to Zeko’s, which they find out is actually a Caribbean style club, they talk about Rita’s family a bit more. Apparently, her mother, who was a paranormal researcher, did some studying in the Caribbean before she had Rita. She flipped out once she had Rita and got stuck in the mental institution while Rita was stuck in a foster home because her father was murdered in the islands before she was born.
They eventually meet Dr. Zeko inside, and he says that the log basically tells them that a lone vampire is in town. Justice doesn’t believe this for a second and leaves the two alone, but Rita is definitely interested. She asks how Zeko would know this, so he admits to her that he faced a vampire back on his home island over a woman and lost, implying this is how he was given the massive scar on his face. He leaves her with the advice of how important having faith is. Once he leaves, Max finally approaches her for the first time. After stopping a snake from attacking Rita (because for some reason this club has a pet snake), he starts to flirt with her, and it’s working. However, everything is ruined when Julius comes by and tries to be a wingman, telling her that Max just wants some ass for the night. Feeling disrespected, she storms out and Justice tells off Max as well. Following Max flipping out on Julius for fucking things up, Rita and Justice go back to her apartment, only for Rita’s roommate Nikki (Simbi Khali) to come out and flirt with Justice to the point of being so uncomfortable, he leaves. Before he leaves though, he does notice Rita’s art because apparently, she paints her nightmares. Once he’s gone, Max approaches Nikki in the street, seduces her easily, and they have sex that night. It’s all part of the plan though because Rita only hears it from the other room and assumes Nikki had sex with Justice, making her jealous.
To further the lie, Max writes a note as Nikki, stating she’s moving out because she has a new man, even though in reality, Max killed her. Plus, it takes away the last person protecting her, allowing Max to eventually swoop in on Rita. Rita has no idea about the danger she will find herself in and because of how crazy she will look to those around her, she will face this threat with very little help. Now, it will be even harder to turn down Max’s advances.
My Thoughts:
I have to give Eddie Murphy a lot of credit here. He stepped out of his comfort zone and plays the lead role relatively straight. Also, for the first time in his career, he plays the villain. Is it too much to say that he did a pretty good job at playing a Caribbean vampire? Critics ravaged Vampire in Brooklyn, but I have to be honest, I didn’t think it was half bad. Considering how “out there” the premise is, you need to be fully committed to the role to make this idea work, and Murphy was exactly that. His accent and style were very smooth, and the character of Max was an interesting, modern interpretation of the vampire characters we know and love.
Hearing him cuss with the accent was very funny too, especially how he says, “Goddamn it”.
He retains the devilishness of the character, while combining it with a certain level of suaveness needed to make it look like he can bed anyone he looks at. Obviously, the long hair he sports would throw off any woman, but Murphy’s conviction in the role of the sly, persuasive, deceitful, and deliciously evil villain works on a surprising level. All he needs is a little conversation to grab a woman’s attention, and he’s got her. Simply put, he’s got game. I can’t deny that. Even as a viewer fully aware of Max’s background and capabilities, I can see how someone as vulnerable as Rita would fall for him. I never thought for a second that because Max is obviously a vampire, there’s no way she would fall for his tricks. When you try to put yourself in her shoes and her mindset, there’s no real indication Max is a supernatural being. Sure, he’s eccentric, but he’s just a guy who knows when to say the right things. He connects on a personal level, has a serious level of sincerity in his eye contact and love language, and he’s an above average dancer. Max has it all really, and Murphy plays the role very well. I fully bought into the character he was selling, which was something I was skeptical about the most before I watched the movie.
Angela Bassett’s Rita is also a very intriguing main character. Her family has gone through hell and back, and it has affected everything about her and her motivations in her life and career. Because of her conflicted mind, she has grown to be emotionally unstable and has a clear fondness for her partner that she can’t seem to admit. She’s closed off at the wrong times but also too open at the wrong times just as well. Rita has too much going on in her head and that’s why she’s able to be swayed back and forth by so many people. Bassett not only plays the emotional parts very well, showing us how much she’s going through in her life with her expressions and energy, as she tries to make sense of it all, but she’s also able to switch into the sultry woman of both Max and Justice’s desires with ease. She doesn’t even have to dress up to command respect but when she does, you better watch out. Justice’s face when she goes out for her date with Max, looking like a model, was basically all of us watching this movie. People forget how much of a stunner Angela Bassett used to be! In addition, Bassett has a nice rapport with Allen Payne as well, and I enjoyed how many issues are thrown in-between the two to keep them apart.
There’s a lot of extra conflict woven into the story to keep things interesting, which I loved. A lot of movies with similar premises would be perfectly satisfied with the “vampire thing” being the whole movie, but Vampire in Brooklyn includes a lot more subplots to keep the pace up and the entertainment value higher than you would expect.
The problem with Vampire in Brooklyn might have just been the label of “horror comedy”. It implies a lot. To accurately describe the movie, it’s hard to truly label it because when you put Eddie Murphy and comedy into the same sentence, the ideas you get in your head are something entirely different to the “comedy” presented here. Though we have moments where Murphy plays a few different characters to illicit some laughs and some fun moments, which are very enjoyable (especially the preacher scene), it’s not as over-the-top as many Eddie Murphy movies before and after it have been. Because of this, the film may have thrown some loyal fans off. Here, Kadeem Hardison’s one-liners were the main sources of comedy, with only certain Eddie lines being sprinkled in, mostly because he was more focused on being this overbearing, unholy figure. Though Murphy had some funny moments, the real treat was him playing such a great villain. Most people going into this movie never expected this type of Eddie because the film was marketed as this “horror comedy” of sorts. Can you blame mainstream audiences? The most serious Eddie had gotten up until that point was Harlem Nights which was a comedy-drama at best. Viewers and fans alike were probably expecting a comedy film through and through. When you look at it, even the poster gives off a comedic vibe! The movie’s momentum was shot in the foot before the opening credits began.
No one knew the movie they were getting. If they walked in with an open mind, I assure you they would give it the same grade I did, or at least close to it.
Now, in terms of horror, the elements are there, but when they try to be really scary, you don’t really feel it. Additionally, there are some scenes where they emphasize the vampiric features of Max and such, but the make-up is so outrageous and obviously fake, it throws you off. It reminded me of Peter Greene in The Mask when he put the actual mask on, only multiplied by ten.
You can see why that would throw me off.
Vampire in Brooklyn isn’t necessarily scary, nor is it some hysterical Eddie Murphy-headlined comedy, but it was very interesting. I was invested in the characters and the story, and I was decently entertained throughout. That’s pretty much all you need to make a movie worth watching. Vampire in Brooklyn may not deliver on its promise as a genre, but it doesn’t shy away from being different. Considering the material given, Wes Craven did a solid job at making this feature as compelling as possible. It doesn’t do one thing great per say, but it does everything fairly decent and that was enough to grab my attention and keep me involved for the entirety of the runtime.
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