Dollar Tree Cinema: Chinese Speaking Vampires

“Chinese Speaking Vampires” (2021)
Starring Davy Williams, Sean Eden Yi, Daniella Brown, June Lee
Directed by Randy Kent
Written by Davy Williams
Not rated, but contains PG-13-ish violence (one really gruesome part) and some language

Twenty-five years ago today, “Hope Floats” premiered in theaters. So naturally, I'm focusing on its spiritual sequel, “Chinese Speaking Vampires.”

I honestly don't remember much about “Hope Floats.” I didn't see it in theaters but watched it on video with friends a year or so later. A quick scan of the IMDb plot summary confirms it revolves around Bullock returning to her hometown from a big city after her marriage falls apart and being romanced by small-town guy Harry Connick Jr.*

The main thing I recall is we started watching it too late and I kept dozing off. I was determined, however, to last long enough to learn why the heck the movie was called “Hope Floats.” I forget the explanation, but it came in the last line.

Which brings me to “Chinese Speaking Vampires,” a 2021 action-horror-comedy that has many flaws but a very direct, easy-to-understand title – the opposite of “Hope Floats,” and what connected the films in my mind soon after I found CSV at Dollar Tree.

Mild spoilers follow.

The movie opens with some text exposition laying out right away that there were vampires in China, they were all but eradicated by the invading Japanese in the '30s, and they have superhuman strength and speed. One more power: When they turn people, the new vampires speak fluent Mandarin. With that established, it's a little hard to understand how long it takes the story to unfold, especially given that this movie is just 80 minutes long.

A struggling actor named Tony (Williams) needs to learn Mandarin to land a part in a movie. To do so, he attempts to enroll in classes at Genji Ma's Mandarin Learning Center. The place is run by the vampire who survived the purge in China, but he seems content to just teach Mandarin.

Later, a trio of vampire troublemakers crash a club where Tony is hanging out with his annoying pal Jim (Richard Gavigan) and even more annoying brother Sam (Brandon Lamberty). They manage to bite a surly dude named Tank before a group of religious vampire hunters intervene.

Gavigan, Lee, Brown and Williams

Tony and Jim's big takeaways from the evening, though, are infatuations with two students, Susie (Brown) and Reika (Lee), from the Mandarin class Tony has yet to take. So with vampires on the board... they take the class while attempting to woo the women. There's plenty of speaking Chinese; not so many vampires.

Eventually, our main and supporting characters start rapidly turning vampire, but they're not on board when Mr. Ma informs them they're going to help him take over Los Angeles and then the world. As if rebelling against their sire wasn't enough trouble, they find themselves in the crosshairs of the zealot vampire hunters, who now count among their number Tank's girlfriend Zarra (Rezzan Denizmen). A black belt in Taekwondo and a champion junior marksman, she's possibly the most interesting character in the movie.

The dialogue in much of the movie is awkward, with some characters seeming like they're trying to sound casual and conversational rather than actually sounding casual and conversational. I felt like this changed when they turned and switched to Mandarin, although, to be fair, I don't know what natural Mandarin dialogue sounds like.

Williams certainly does. His IMDb bio says he's fluent in Mandarin and has performed in a host of movies and TV shows, most of them in China. It seems like he wrote the script based on his own experiences with a dash of absurd horror-comedy thrown in. Yi is an accomplished fight choreographer who also served as the movie's stunt director. These behind-the-scenes tidbits make the concept more interesting.

But the plot's flimsy and over-complicated at the same time. I don't need much explanation for Ma being evil, but it's kind of confusing how he seems to be plotting nothing at all and all of a sudden has his eye on world domination. His connection to the club vampires, who show up later as his henchmen, is also unclear.

The religious vampire hunters are obviously bad guys too. They have plenty of “America-first” dialogue and take shots at China, and, hey, I don't like racism either, but... these are vampires. Being anti-blood-sucking murder monster is not bigotry. Or maybe I'm too steeped in the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” mythology, where a person's soul is replaced by a demon when they become a vampire. But, if these vampires are just people with restricted diets and sunlight allergies... why is it cool to kill some of them?

Clearly, I'm over-thinking this. But the concept is not without potential.

If you want to examine the possible humanity of vampires and the morality of taking their lives, all while not painting Christians as intolerant buffoons, well, then you're speaking my language.

* - So it's a proto-Hallmark movie.