The Undead Have Never Looked So Sleep-Deprived
Some films resurrect the vampire genre. Others drive a stake right through its heart and then ask you to pay for the privilege of watching it happen. Living Among Us (2018), written, directed, and produced by Brian Metcalf, belongs firmly in the latter category — a cinematic séance that tries to summon Interview with the Vampire but ends up calling forth Blair Witch: Twilight Edition.
Released five years after it was filmed and seven months after John Heard’s death (poor man didn’t deserve this as his cinematic send-off), the movie claims to offer a “fresh” take on vampires by making them the subjects of a found-footage documentary. The only thing truly found here is the audience’s will to live, buried somewhere around minute 40.
The Setup: Reality TV, But Make It Fangy
The plot starts with the kind of premise that sounds mildly clever at 3 a.m. after too much Red Bull: What if vampires were real… and wanted good PR? Enter Samuel (William Sadler, visibly regretting his life choices), a vampire leader who wants to prove his kind can coexist peacefully with humans. He agrees to let a small TV documentary crew into one of his vampire families’ homes to film their everyday life — you know, just normal undead stuff: dinner, family drama, the occasional ritualistic blood sacrifice.
Our unlucky documentarians include Mike (Thomas Ian Nicholas, forever the guy from American Pie who peaked at prom), his girlfriend Carrie (Jordan Hinson), and Benny (Hunter Gomez), a cameraman with the enthusiasm of a man who’s been told he’s in a vampire movie but didn’t read the script.
They head to the home of Andrew Pritchard (John Heard, valiantly trying to act from beyond the grave), his pale wife Elleanor (Esmé Bianco, a vampire MILF with the emotional range of a wax museum figure), and their “sons” Blake and Selvin, who look like the type of guys who unironically wear leather trench coats indoors.
The Family That Slays Together
Once the crew arrives, they’re told not to go into the basement — a rule that, in horror films, is as enforceable as “don’t push the big red button.” Before long, the camera starts shaking, everyone whispers ominously, and we get the usual found-footage greatest hits: night vision, jump scares, and people saying, “Did you hear that?” when yes, we absolutely did.
The vampires try to act relatable. Andrew insists they’re just “misunderstood,” Elleanor reminisces about her transformation like it’s a bad college experience, and their son Blake tries way too hard to look tortured and sexy. (Imagine Edward Cullen after a Monster Energy binge and a philosophy minor.)
Meanwhile, Selvin skulks around like a mix between Gollum and a guy who never got over being grounded in 1972. At one point, he sneaks into the crew’s room at night to sniff Carrie while she sleeps, which the movie treats as eerie but mostly just feels like a deleted scene from Dateline NBC.
The Rules: Because Found Footage Always Needs Rules
The family lays out clear guidelines: no sunlight, no garlic, no basement. By hour two, the crew has broken all three, plus the unspoken rule of not boring your audience to death.
Hidden cameras are installed, footage gets recorded, and soon the vampires reveal their true nature — which, shockingly, involves eating people. This revelation hits with all the impact of discovering water is wet. But the film plays it like a grand twist: “They’re monsters after all!” Cue screaming, running, and an extended sequence where everyone makes terrible tactical decisions in poorly lit hallways.
There’s also a subplot about Samuel, the vampire PR rep, who shows up with his two blonde “daughters” that may or may not be dating each other. The movie seems unsure whether this is erotic, horrifying, or just a way to meet the Syfy channel’s blood-and-cleavage quota.
The Carnage (and the Camera Work)
If Living Among Us were actually scary, the found-footage gimmick might work. Instead, we get shaky cam so aggressive it should come with a motion sickness warning. The lighting alternates between “too dark to see” and “overexposed like a hostage video.”
When the vampires finally attack, it’s chaos — but not in a fun Evil Dead 2 way. More like a we-had-two-days-of-shooting-left-and-ran-out-of-fog-machine-fluid way. Heads roll, throats are slit, and the blood looks suspiciously like store-brand ketchup.
To its credit, the film does manage a few unintentionally hilarious moments. One vampire solemnly explains that sunlight burns them, then immediately demonstrates by sticking his hand out the window like a kid testing rain. Another scene involves a vampire dismemberment montage set to an upbeat rock track that sounds like it came from a free stock library titled “EDGY 2003.”
Acting: Dead on Arrival
John Heard, bless him, tries. Even from beyond the mortal plane, he brings a sliver of gravitas to his role as the vampire patriarch. Sadly, the script gives him lines like, “We just want to live… among you,” which no Oscar-winner alive or undead could make sound dignified.
Esmé Bianco looks perpetually confused, as though she wandered onto set from Game of Thrones and decided to stay. Andrew Keegan as Blake deserves a special mention for being the smuggest vampire since Jared Leto’s Morbius, while Thomas Ian Nicholas delivers his lines with the enthusiasm of a man checking his phone for rent payment reminders between takes.
William Sadler phones in his performance so hard it should have roaming charges. He’s clearly a good sport, but even he can’t make a monologue about vampire ethics sound less ridiculous than it is.
The Tone: Somewhere Between PBS and Purgatory
Metcalf clearly wants Living Among Us to be social commentary — a metaphor about prejudice and media exploitation. But the movie’s attempts at depth are drowned out by amateur pacing and an utter lack of tension. It’s hard to ponder moral coexistence when your cast is being hunted through a basement full of rubber corpses.
The film’s documentary conceit could’ve been clever — vampires letting humans tell their story to gain public sympathy — but it’s handled with the nuance of a YouTube prank video. Every “reveal” is followed by someone saying, “Oh my God, are you filming this?” Yes, Mike, we’re all filming this. That’s the problem.
The Ending: Everyone Dies (Including Your Patience)
Eventually, the crew figures out that Elleanor is an ancient vampire queen, which might have been shocking if the movie hadn’t been hinting at it since the halfway mark with the subtlety of a billboard. After a series of poorly lit scuffles, sunlight, and melodrama, our human heroes die in a car ambush, proving once again that vampires are bad roommates.
The movie ends with Samuel appearing on the news, claiming innocence while a TV anchor plays the incriminating footage live on air — apparently editing a full documentary in the span of 24 hours. It’s meant to be poetic irony, but it lands somewhere between Scooby-Doo reveal and Fox News Exclusive.
Final Verdict: Undead, Uninspired, Unnecessary
Living Among Us tries to blend mockumentary realism with vampire horror and social satire, but it ends up as a cinematic smoothie of clichés. It’s The Office if everyone had fangs, and none of the jokes landed.
The dialogue is wooden, the pacing drags like a coffin through mud, and the scares are as toothless as the cast’s attempts at sincerity. Even the title feels like a cruel joke — yes, this movie exists among us, but we wish it didn’t.
If you’re desperate for vampire content, go rewatch What We Do in the Shadows and cleanse your cinematic palate. If you insist on watching Living Among Us, make sure you bring garlic — not to fend off vampires, but to ward off the stench of mediocrity.
Final Score: 1.5 out of 5 Blood Bags.
In the immortal words of Andrew Pritchard: “We just want to live among you.”
After this movie, I respectfully decline.
