Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant ( **1/2 )

October 22, 2009 2:46 p.m. EST

108 minutes

In theaters October 23, 2009

Rating: PG-13, Fantasy thriller

Get ready for another vampire movie that bites the neck that feeds it.

Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is a bloodthirsty fantasy-adventure -- more creepy than scary, and only intermittently freaky -- that's loosely based on the first of four Young Adult "Cirque du Freak" trilogies by Darren Shan.

A young boy named Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia), a clean-cut teenager named for the author of the source books, and his best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson), a wannabe rebel, clearly bored with their small-town existence, wander into a traveling freak show on display in a dark, mysterious theater in the midst of a one-night-only performance.

The emcee of the show is a mysterious magician named Larten Crepsley, played by John C. Reilly, who is accompanied by his enormous, colorful but venomous pet spider.

Steve recognizes Crepsley from a book he has read about the undead and suspects that he's a vampire. When, after an unfortunate turn of events, the only way Darren can save Steve's life is to allow aloof mentor Crepsley to turn him into a half-vampire as well as his assistant, Darren leaves his former normal life behind.

So Darren fakes his own death and moves into the Cirque.

What he quickly comes to learn is that there's an inter-species conflict between the bloodsuckers and the Vampanese that has been halted thanks to a tenuous peace treaty. But a civil war approaches, one that Darren and Steve are destined to play a crucial part in.

Director Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy, In Good Company, American Dreamz), who co-wrote the script with Brian Helgeland, is in unfamilar territory here. Comedy is Weitz's usual terrain, while CdF: TVA is an amalgam of fantasy, drama, comedy, suspense, and horror. His mandate here is to combine the eerie and the darkly funny, and he also manages to mix in some nifty special effects without letting them overwhelm the rest of the film's assets.

But characters pop up and then disappear, and plot thrusts fall off cliffs. Clearly, there are far more characters on display here than anyone has any interest in delineating, and the attempt to convert three books into one movie has resulted in a rather crowded adaptation of a work sporting such themes as trust, loyalty, destiny, and teenage angst.

No film as clearly meant to be the first installment of a new big-screen franchise as this one is can be a fully satisfying experience as a stand-alone feature. That said, however, this is a consistently interesting and arresting vampire drama, despite its shaky continuity and choppy editing, as well as an intriguing coming-of-age piece against a background of generational conflict.

The main attraction is John C. Reilly, a skilled and prolific character actor who was Oscar-nominated for Chicago and was funny and fine as the lead in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and the co-lead in Step Brothers. Here he plays the weary but charismatic surrogate father of the half-vampire whom he has made his assistant. And he's fun to watch.

Surrounding Reilly is an array of freaky-deekies populating the sideshow, played by the likes of Salma Hayek, Ken Watanabe, Willem Dafoe, Michael Cerveris, Patrick Fugit, Orlando Jones, Jessica Carlson, and Frankie Faison. Chances are we'll be sering more of them in any followups that surface. However, it's difficult not to notice that, frankly, any or all of them would be more interesting spending time with than the two youthful characters at center stage, played by two inexperienced actors who are certainly not embarrassing but who don't really know how to bring them to life.

Fortunately for us, there's always Reilly's Crepsley to give the film some bite.

So go ahead and sink your teeth into the supernatural and funny/peculiar Twilight-tween-targeted Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant. It's not all that bloody, but it is bloody entertaining.