JAKOB'S WIFE (REVIEW)

Dir. Travis Stevens

Reviewer. Martyn Wakefield

When a Minister's wife rekindles an old relationship, she comes across a new lease of life as a vampire. Moving from one master to another, her new found hunger gives her more fight for freedom than the 30 years of emptiness have given her before.

Laced with plenty of dark humour, there's never too much to detract from the horror roots of this vampire classic. There's literally gallons of blood to be spilt, enough to feed the lost boys to retirement and as such, there really are some gut wrenching moments between the bickering of Jakob and Anne.

Barbara Crampton proves once again that even at the age of ... well, we wouldn't want to be that rude, she is still the leading scream queen and can put to rights any other leading lady in the genre. Her performance plays on the motions of a devoid housewife and yet also indulges the freedom of being a vampire with bloodlust to perfection. She's never been so youthful and there's plenty more life in Crampton that we're starting to question whether she is genuinely a vampire.

Some of the humour harks back at the glory days of RE-ANIMATOR while the pitch perfect special effects remind us why quite quickly why practical will always be preferred over CGI. Head's truly do roll and we haven't seen this much fun with executions since HATCHET.

There's a lot of fun to be had with Jakob and his wife and as such horror fans really should check this out. It won't break new ground but Crampton's role makes this worthy enough to stand on it's own two feet.