Horror Movie Review: Night Teeth (2021)

Night Teeth is a 2021 American vampire horror film directed by Adam Randall from a screenplay by Brent Dillon.

Benny, a freelance chauffeur driving in place of his brother Jay, is hired by friends Blaire and Zoe to drive them to several popular Los Angeles nightclubs. Unbeknownst to him, the girls are both vampires.

The movie then reveals that vampires have co-existed peacefully with humans for centuries, feeding only by consent. Victor is a wealthy vampire lord who has grown bored and discontented with his life. He’s planning to subvert the system by kidnapping Jay’s girlfriend, breaking the truce with Boyle Heights. Unbeknownst to Benny, Jay is secretly part of the human council charged with maintaining the peace between vampires and humans. As Jay and his allies begin hunting down all of the vampires in LA, Victor executes a plan to wipe out his fellow lords and seize power for himself. While tasking Blaire and Zoe with creating as much chaos in the city as they can to distract the vampire hunters and peacekeepers.

When Benny drops the girls off at a hotel, he discovers that the hotel is actually a feeding ground for vampires. He realizes what Blaire and Zoe are using him for. The girls threaten his life, but spare him so they can get to Jay. During a visit to one of their targets, the girls are trapped by vampire hunters, but Benny decides to help them escape and lets them hide at his home. Benny then learns that Victor has his brother, who lost to the vampire in hand-to-hand combat while trying to slay him.

Benny drops the girls off at the last location on their list and discovers that the home belongs to Victor.

Is there any way this night could still end well? What will Victor do with Jay now he has him? Watch and find out.

Vampires. A tricky genre. Everything at this point has been done. Or has it? Somehow Night Teeth manages to bring something fresh to the table, with Benny the chauffeur.

Night Teeth is a visually stunning movie, with a neon colour palette. A good score, but poor soundtrack for me personally. If you’re not a hip hop fan, you’ll struggle as I did. Even though I appreciate it made sense alongside Benny’s career aspirations.

The performances are great, everyone acts well. Although you don’t learn much beyond surface level about the characters, bar one, so it’s hard to invest. I did enjoy Blaire’s backstory, it was fascinating to learn she’s a relatively new vampire. That information throws up all sorts of questions and opens up a great discussion. I would have liked to have seen this story play out on screen though, rather than have a character tell me.

Night Teeth has great world building, but as I said could have shown so so so much more. They throw out information such as, there’s 5 vampire bosses, a truce, a mob and vampire hunting groups. But why not show me all this? Why not expand on that? It reminded me so much of Bright. They started off with a fascinating world with endless possibilities and desperately need a sequel to show more. But they’ll most likely have the same luck as Bright and it’ll never come.

One aspect that confused me, and I have to describe it this way because it’s true. But everyone was so horny for blood! But! They barely showed any gore. There’s a scene where Victor kills off a boss and her companion and it literally cuts away from the action and when we return, there’s absolute carnage like something serious went down. Why cut away from that?

Everything in horror can be improved with more gore and more blood. You can never have enough. It’s disappointing because the effects were great. The fangs were realistic and despite some dodgy cgi, it all looked perfect. They had the right brutal personalities of vampires we don’t get to see very often, but they didn’t show that brutality.

Overall, Night Teeth was better than I hoped but not nearly as good as it could have been. I hope a sequel arises and is able to do better and expand on the world building laid out in this one. But, if Bright is anything to go by, I don’t hold out much hope.