- Directed by Travis Stevens
- Written by Kathy Charles, Mark Steensland, Travis Stevens
- Stars Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden, Bonnie Aarons
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes
- Link: https://amzn.to/3iGNfKg
Synopsis
We open with Pastor Jokob Fedder giving a sermon to a very sparsely crowded church. He’s giving a sermon on husbands and wives, and his own wife, Anne, tunes him out halfway through.
Amelie tells them that her mother has started drinking again, could they talk to her tomorrow? The camera follows Amelie home, and we see that it’s a very small town. It gets dark on the way, and she’s frightened by some rats in the middle of the road. Someone whispers “Amelia” but no one is there. Someone grabs her from behind.
Next morning, the sheriff comes by as Amelia never made it home. Carol and Bob, Jakob’s brother and sister-in-law come over for dinner, and they all speculate where Amelie might have gone.
Anne seems really distracted and unhappy. Tom Low, her old boyfriend, is coming to town to work on a renovation project that Anne is involved with. We can see that she’s got hopes for Tom well beyond any kind of construction project as she gets all fixed up for their date– er, meeting. When asked about Jakob, she sighs and says, “We’re happy” very unconvincingly. They go to the job site and kiss.
Then they hear something downstairs in the darkness making noise and they go down to see what it is. There are boxes there that are newly arrived, large crates. They start making out like teenagers; she can’t go through with it though and pulls away. Something in the box they’re sitting on thumps. There’s someone in there. No, it’s hundreds of rats, and they attack Tom. As Anne turns to run, someone is behind her…
Jakob is calling around looking for Anne when she finally gets home. She says things went fine. She stands in front of the mirror, and she’s covered in blood. Next morning, she says she’s not hungry and doesn’t make Jakob breakfast, which he takes as a sign something isn’t right. Whatever he suspects, that ain’t it. When he returns home that afternoon, all the curtains have been drawn shut, and Anne is dressed up, all in red; she wants to go out.
They go to a nice restaurant, but she doesn’t eat anything. She watches him eat his steak very carefully. Next morning, she goes to the grocery and wants to buy a bunch of blood from the butcher. That really hits the spot for her, and she finally looks happy. She dances around the house with a big glass of blood in her hand. She starts moving the furniture around, and she’s really strong. And then she pukes it all up onto the carpet.
Jakob goes to see Bob and Carol, and he explains his marital issues to them. Bob recommends finding Tom Low and sending him a message.
That evening, she sees the creature standing out in her backyard. He makes her do things to herself– until Jakob catches her. The next morning, Anne eats worms from the garden; living food tastes better. The dentist says Anne has new teeth coming in, growing behind her regular teeth. The dentist turns on the ultraviolet tooth-whitening machine and Anne starts to smoke as it burns her lips off.
Jakob goes to the construction site, looking for Tom, and Tom’s car is still there. He finds two annoying teenagers – one of whom is killed and eaten right in front of him… by Amelie. She’s a vampire now, and she says her master is at his house. Jakob and the annoying girl, Ellie, escape from Amelie.
Meanwhile, Anne is crying over her ruined face at home when the main creature comes for her. The neighbor sees her flailing around inside and goes over to see if she’s OK. She slices his throat with a knife and then pulls his head back like a Pez dispenser. Jakob gets home in time to witness it all. “It wasn’t me!” She lies. “Of course it was you!” he said. She tells him everything, and he cleans up the mess. The sheriff comes around, saying there’s been lots of trouble up at the mill. The neighbor gets up, not really dead, and Jakob stakes him to death.
Jakob thinks killing The Master will revert Anne to what she was before, but Anne doesn’t look too thrilled with the idea. The two of them bicker all the way to the mill. Jakob shoots Amelie with a squirt bottle full of holy water and then Anne stakes her.
The two argue, and Jakob says Anne brought this all on herself, then he drives off, leaving her there. Anne eventually finds a ride home to find that The Master has visited Jakob. The Master asks why Anne puts up with Jakob now that she’s different. The Master tells Anne that she needs to decide between her and Jakob. Anne and Jakob have rough sex on the floor; she chooses him.
They get a phone call and go to see Maddie. They go over there armed with stakes and a mallet. Maddie’s dead, but it’s not a vampire. They drag Maddie’s body out, it’s like a blood-filled carryout order. One of the neighbors reports them to the police. Anne takes Maddie to the kitchen to drain of blood, while Jakob goes to the mill to find The Master.
Jakob gets pulled over by the sheriff. They open his case to find the book “Dracula” along with rope, holy water, stakes, and a mallet. It’s a vampire-hunter’s toolkit! Meanwhile, Bob and Carol come over for lasagna night and find Anne draining a body of blood. They call the police too. The Master kills them both. Anne asks The Master what she wants, but The Master turns that around and asks what Anne wants. No one ever asked her that before. “I want to live a bigger life,” Anne says. The police arrive and shoot The Master, which does nothing. Jakob sneaks up and stakes The Master as she monologues. She dies hard and messily. The police say they’ll pretend it didn’t happen, but it needs to end tonight.
What do they do now? Anne doesn’t want to be cured, but she wants to make her own decisions now. They’re going to sell the house and just vanish somewhere. Can they make it work?
Commentary
It’s not listed as a comedy, but there are a lot of funny parts to this. It’s not super obvious right away that it’s a story about vampires, but that gets cleared up pretty quickly. There’s a lot of female empowerment ideas presented here, to be opposed to the whole Biblical “woman obey the man,” narrative. It’s clear that in the beginning, Anne has spent many years in the shadow of her community-leader husband, as the title says, she’s not Anne, she’s “Jakob’s wife,” which isn’t much of a personal identity. Anne and Jakob have a dysfunctional marriage before the film, and it’s even weirder afterward, but at least they have a chance of working things out as equals. Only now, Jakob is motivated to not be too overbearing– or she’ll eat him.
The makeup effects and cinematography are excellent. All the actors are longtime pros, and the script is really funny. I liked this one a lot.