If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Twilight, CSI: Johannesburg, and a failed public health PSA got thrown into a blender and left running for two hours, congratulations — you’ve just imagined Eternity. It’s a South African horror film about vampires, science, love, and sunlight. It promises eternal life, but watching it feels more like eternal boredom.
This movie tries to sink its teeth into a compelling idea — vampires fighting over a serum that lets them walk in daylight — but it ends up gumming you to death with fake fangs and bad lighting. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a nightclub flyer you regret picking up: cheap, confusing, and full of people pretending to be sexier than they are.
☀️ The Plot: Vampires, Science, and a Lot of Johannesburg Nightclubs
The story begins with a scientist named Tevis Shapiro (Ian Roberts), who’s researching a cure for HIV/AIDS. Noble work — until he accidentally discovers a serum that allows vampires to survive in sunlight. You know, just another day in the lab: “Oops, I cured death instead of disease!”
This serum immediately becomes the world’s most chaotic science experiment. The vampire community splits into factions: the “traditionalists” who like hanging out in shadows and coffins, and the “modernists” who want to go tanning and terrorize humans in broad daylight. The tension builds to… well, nothing coherent, really. But there’s lots of growling, nightclub lighting, and dialogue that sounds like it was written by a philosophy major halfway through an energy drink.
Meanwhile, Shapiro vanishes. Enter Borlak (David James), a vampire so melodramatic he makes Dracula Untold look like Citizen Kane. Borlak kills Shapiro’s wife, threatens his daughter Jenny (Rikki Brest), and plans to unleash the serum because apparently global domination is easier when you can go for brunch.
Jenny, bless her poor mortal heart, gets rescued by a brooding young vampire named Billy (Andre Frauenstein). He’s sensitive, misunderstood, and looks like he got lost on his way to an Abercrombie & Fitch photo shoot. They fall in love in record time — about three scenes — because nothing says “romance” like your new boyfriend drinking plasma out of a blood bag.
Of course, Billy’s ex-girlfriend Lisa (Christina Storm) shows up, because no vampire soap opera is complete without a jealous ex who wears too much eyeliner. Lisa teams up with Borlak to sabotage Billy’s relationship, proving that even undead love triangles are messy.
And because no film is complete without one person who looks tired of everyone’s nonsense, we get Joe Kau (Hlomla Dandala), a police officer who knows vampires are real but can’t convince anyone else. Think Blade but with more sighing. He eventually teams up with Billy to stop Borlak, which leads to an ending so grimly melodramatic it makes Romeo and Juliet look like The Hangover. Jenny dies, Billy begs Joe to kill him too, and the audience dies inside.
🧛♂️ The Acting: Bloodless Performances from the Undead
There’s wooden acting, and then there’s Eternity — a masterclass in the undead art of emotional paralysis. The vampires here aren’t just cold-blooded; they’re dead inside in ways that transcend fiction.
David James, who was terrifying in District 9, plays Borlak as if he’s still waiting for someone to hand him a real script. He glowers, snarls, and delivers monologues about vampire destiny that sound like rejected lyrics from a 2004 Evanescence song.
Andre Frauenstein, as Billy, seems perpetually lost — possibly because he’s trying to remember which camera to look at. He’s supposed to be tragic and conflicted, but mostly he just looks like a man who’s just been told his car’s been towed. His chemistry with Rikki Brest’s Jenny has all the heat of a malfunctioning light bulb.
Jenny, for her part, spends most of the movie running, crying, or staring lovingly at her vampire boyfriend while he explains the plot. Her father dies, her mother’s murdered, her boyfriend’s undead, and somehow she still reacts with the energy of someone mildly inconvenienced by slow Wi-Fi.
Then there’s Hlomla Dandala as Joe Kau, the lone highlight — and by “highlight,” I mean he’s acting like he’s in an entirely different movie, possibly one that’s actually good. You can see the resignation in his eyes: a man realizing he’s in a vampire flick where half the cast is paler than the lighting budget.
🩸 The Dialogue: Garlic for the Brain
The dialogue in Eternity is so overwrought it could give Shakespeare a nosebleed. Every line sounds like it was written by a sentient thesaurus addicted to melodrama.
Sample exchanges include gems like:
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“We are the children of the night — but what happens when night ends?”
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“Your blood sings to me, Jenny. It sings of life I can never have.”
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“Science gave us hope, but hope is just another form of weakness.”
It’s poetry — if poetry were written by an AI trained exclusively on Hot Topic posters and Vampire: The Masquerade fan fiction.
Even worse, every conversation lasts three sentences too long. Characters pause dramatically before delivering their lines as if they’re waiting for applause that never comes. You half expect someone to turn to the camera and whisper, “We’re deep, right?”
🌞 The Production: The Real Horror Is the Budget
Let’s talk about the look of the film — because it looks like it was shot through a dirty glass of red wine. The cinematography is murky, the lighting inconsistent, and every nightclub scene looks like a failed perfume commercial.
The visual effects for the serum are straight out of Microsoft PowerPoint — glowing liquids that seem to have wandered in from a Windows 98 screensaver. The “vampire fights” consist mostly of pushing, mild shoving, and dramatic grunting. You’ll see more convincing action in a high school stage play.
Even the editing feels possessed. Scenes cut mid-sentence, camera angles change without reason, and the pacing could only be described as “languid death.” It’s as if the film is constantly forgetting what it was supposed to be doing.
💔 The Themes: Vampires, AIDS, and Unintentional Comedy
Now, credit where it’s due: Eternity actually has an interesting concept buried somewhere under all the bad acting and neon fog. Mixing vampire mythology with medical ethics and South African social context could’ve been powerful.
But the execution? It’s like someone tried to tackle profound questions about life, death, and disease — and then remembered they only had $50 and a fog machine. The result is a tone-deaf mess that treats HIV research and vampire lore with the same level of depth you’d expect from a YouTube fan edit.
There’s a sense that the movie wants to say something about immortality and morality — but every time it gets close, someone starts making out, and the message gets lost in a pile of bad wigs and blood capsules.
🪦 The Ending: Because Every Vampire Movie Needs One Last Monologue
By the time Billy sacrifices himself to join his dead girlfriend in eternal rest, you’re just happy it’s over. It’s meant to be tragic. It’s meant to be poetic. Instead, it’s just merciful.
Billy’s final moments are scored with music that sounds like an ’80s synth funeral, and as he begs to die, you can’t help but think: same, Billy, same.
🧛 Final Verdict: Stake It and Move On
Eternity could have been a clever reinvention of vampire mythology with a South African twist. Instead, it’s a lifeless blend of romance, horror, and pseudo-science — Twilight without charm, Blade without energy, and Interview with the Vampire without the budget, script, or understanding of lighting.
It’s ambitious, sure. But ambition without execution is just daylight — and these vampires should’ve stayed in the dark.
Final Grade: F for Fangless.
If you’re looking for a vampire movie with bite, look elsewhere. This one doesn’t suck blood. It just sucks — eternally.
