Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Released Year: 2009
Directed by Paul Weitz

Casted by:
Chris Massoglia as Darren Shan
John C. Reilly as Larten Crepsley
Josh Hutcherson as Steve Leonard
Jessica Carlson as Rebecca
Ray Stevenson as Murlough
渡辺 謙 Ken Watanabe as Hibernius Tall
Salma Hayek as Madame Truska
Michael Cerveris as Desmond Tiny
Willem Dafoe as Gavner Purl
Story:

Darren is an A class student with a good future, his best friend is Steve who is a useless bump. Darren is fancy with spider while Steve fancy the vampire. Steve has been wishing to become a vampire to end up his pathetic life. On one night, they received a brochure from Mr Tiny to attend the freak show.

Despite how the school teacher refuse to let them attend the show, the 2 youngster went on the freak show by themselves. The show was host by Hibernius Tall, all kind of freak person appeared such as the wolfman, the woman who can grown her body again, the rib-man, the man who can eat everything even fire. And Madame Truska who can transform herself by touching whoever feel the future of Darren when she touched him. The final performer is Crepsley who Darren & Steve suspect he is a vampire. Crepsley warn them not to announce his identity or else he will kill them.

The school teacher brought the police to the show and force them to close down. To hide from the school, Darren and Steve hide in the dungeon. While Gavner and Crepsley have their discussion, they discover Steve is there. Steve begged Crepsley to turn him into a vampire, but after tasting Steve's blood, Crepsley state that Steve's blood is not good to become a vampire. Steve is pissed off and swear he will come back to hunt the vampire down. Darren's hideout was discovered too and he ran away by stealing the spider from Crepsley. In the meantime, Gavner inform that vampaneze has sent Murlough to kill Crepsley.

Next day, Steve discovered that Darren got the spider and try to kill it but was bitten instead. To get the antidote, Darren went back to the freak camp and find Crepsley. To take up his wife, Madame Truska's advice, Crepsley decided to turn Darren into half vampire in exchange for the antidote. Darren agree on the deal and promise to guard against Crepsley's coffin during daytime to prevent the attack from Murlough. Darren was found death the next day but actually is a fake death. Later at night, Crepsley come to dig out his coffin and brought him to stay in the freak camp. In another hand, Steve was jealous Darren got his dream and went to work with Murlough to slave the vampires.

Living in the freak camp, Darren was in the same room with the snake boy, Evra. Darren even fall in love with the monkey girl Rebecca. But Murlough brought Steve to attack by capturing Darren's family and Rebecca. Steve offered Darren to surrender and join them but was rejected. While fighting, Rebecca used her tail to open the knots and let go of the Shan's family. Crepsley is unable to fight against the 2 rivals and Rebecca fed Darren with her blood and become powerful to help Crepsley. Mr Tiny was watching all these and finally turn Murlough into a tiny person and went away with Steve.

Finally Darren and Crepsley went back to the Freak camp and other voted and agreed to let Darren stay. Crepsley even offered him a new coffin in the camp too.

L² Scored: 4/10

L² Comment:

This is from Darren Shan's novel series, "The Saga of Darren Shan". How weird, the author used his own name to be the main character, huh?!? The whole movie is not bad, quite good. Just like the freak show in "The Wolfgirl", you can see all sorts of freak showing their freak thing.

But i always thought vampire is monster/creatures but not freak. And both the new actor Chris Massoglia & Josh Hutcherson still need a lot of training on their acting... overall the movie is ok, nothing much excited about it...