Shadowland
Shadowland
| 30 November 2010 (USA)
Shadowland Trailers

A taut reinvention of vampire lore, Shadowland opens in modern day North America, where construction workers uncover an old stone cross and what appears to be a wooden stake. They remove the stake from the ground, allowing Laura (Caitlin McIntosh), a slumbering vampire, to revive and rise from the earth. Beaten and weak, Laura is unable to speak, remember who she is, or even the fact that she is a vampire! As Laura attempts to make sense of the strange new world around her, she begins to remember not only an idyllic human life in 1897 but the handsome Lazarus (Carlos Antonio León), a mysterious lover who may not have had her best interests in mind. Soon Julian (Jason Contini), a world-weary vampire hunter employed by the church, begins tracking Laura, but as he closes in for the kill he learns that things are not what they seem.

Reviews
Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!
ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises
Spoonatects Am i the only one who thinks........Average?
Merolliv I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.
Leofwine_draca SHADOWLAND is one of the most boring low budget vampire flicks I can remember watching. The story has a female vampire uncovered at a building site before she wanders around for a while covered in mud, trying to figure out the reason for her existence. This is part police procedural but mostly boredom, with absolutely no plot or character development.
bobjohnson994 I give this a solid 4 out of 10, without any curve adjustment for being independent, so that is not a bad score.I agree with one commenter that it is almost like watching a lost soul who is an addict, wandering around, looking for purpose.Also, I think if women thought they could get biceps like Caitlin, they would volunteer for vampirism!! What is going out in the day compared to having guns like that to show off? I also think Caitlin pulled off the contrast between her feisty, pre-vampiric self, and her broken, insecure post vampire self. She is a good actress in that regard.I fault the writing a bit. Some of the tension between the Hero and the black pastor was too contrived, they could have handled that differently.Still, an enjoyable watch, glad I rented it. I hope she does more work in the future.Caitlin! Flex for us! :)
Paul Magne Haakonsen Well I found "Shadowland" to be a rather enjoyable movie on one hand, but on the other hand there was just something crucial missing from it to make it great.The storyline was good enough, although you don't really get any chance or any real deep insight as to whom the characters are, and they come off as rather soulless, shallow characters, which is a shame. The story does, however, delve a bit into the background of Laura (played by Caitlin McIntosh), but it is nowhere near any point as being where it really establishes any real depth to her character. And as for the mysterious hunter Julian (played by Jason Contini), then we are given even less insight to his story and background.So for some odd reason, the movie is basically about an hour and forty minutes of watching a vampire lady trying to track back to her familiar places in the time where she was from, while a hunter is trying to track her down. This is basically the essential core of the movie and the entire feature concept. Sort of lacking depth and levels in which the audience can get immersed.The acting was actually good enough for a movie of this budget. And I personally do think that the people hired for the various roles were doing quite alright, and was at no point amateurish and pathetic at acting as you tend to experience in movies of this kind. So thumbs up on that aspect at least."Shadowland" doesn't make use of a lot of special effects, nor does it make a lot of use of CGI. The little that was used was used in moderation and worked out well enough to illustrate the points trying to be achieved. However, there was one thing that was really sort of anti-climatic; it was when Laura was screaming in the church and the windows had to be blown out. It looked like a small rock was just randomly tossed through the windows, taking out a small fragment of the glass only. It was hilarious, and it didn't work out on any level at all.Oddly enough, there is just something about "Shadowland" that makes you keep watching right up to the very end. There is some kind of strange lure to the movie, despite it not really having much aspect or depth. So the director did do something right after all.For a vampire movie, then "Shadowland" was somewhat of a rather tame experience. And personally, I didn't fully grasp the idea of having an extra set of fangs, and especially not have them placed where they were. It made the vampire look sort of retarded in a way. Kind of hard to take it serious when the mouth was widened by an extra set of fangs, and it would cause them to speak with an impediment."Shadowland" is a movie that doesn't offer much on most levels, but strangely enough manages to keep you lured in for the entire length of the feature. And because of this, I have to settle on giving "Shadowland" a 5/10 rating.
politehere This film is somewhat enjoyable in that it avoids using too many clichés and tries to be different. It's quite successful at that. The film makes use of flashbacks at appropriate moments to unfold the past life of a female vampire. This helps the viewers understand that there's a human there somewhere underneath.The film was quite successful at making me sympathize with her present life, although it was hard to sympathize with her past life, which is what we see in the flashbacks. One might think, well, she was an unruly daughter to her father and she just got what she deserved and was doomed to carry the pain of living the rest of her life as a vampire.When I was watching this film, I didn't really feel like I was watching a vampire film. This was different. It was like following the story of a beggar trying to get herself some food and clothes and escaping from the police except that she had uncanny powers.This film IS entertaining, but at times I felt it was too boring to watch specially because there aren't many main characters involved in the film other than a vampire girl wandering in the streets, an uninteresting guy trying to catch her and stupid police officers who don't even know how to use guns.If you are interested in watching how a beggar desperately tries to survive on the streets, this is a perfect movie to see, otherwise keep your distance.
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