Welcome back for another edition of A Second Look with Jeff Stockton! In this segment I will take a "second look" at a past LRF release with a fresh set of eyes.
This time around I will be looking at Fevre Dream, the vampire drama from writer Seth Overton. The Season 5 film did well with critics (Metascore: 70) but lost nearly $50 million for the studio. I remember finding the film interesting, but I honestly could not remember much of the actual story after all this time outside of vampires on a riverboat.
Having re-watched Fevre Dream now, I have to say that the actual story itself holds up pretty well. At times it can be a bit episodic, but it still works. That said, Hugh Jackman was terribly miscast in the lead role. We're supposed to believe the handsome "song and dance man" (to quote one of the film's original reviews) as a hideous riverboat captain? I didn't buy that for one second. I also feel that the film was mis-marketed as Drama/Supernatural. No wonder it bombed at the box office. While the film is not exactly a festival of terror, it would have been smarter to play up the films Horror elements (or even the historical elements) in the marketing of the film. When I think supernatural drama, I think of stuff like Ghost, not Civil War-era vampires slaughtering an entire town. The film was solid, but it could have been great.
Original Grade: B
New Grade: B-
Fevre Dream Link: https://lrfdatabase.weebly.com/fevre-dream.html
No comments:
Post a Comment