The word “vampire” conjures immediate images of men exuding aristocratic masculinity – tall, dark, and handsome. Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Brad Pitt, Frank Langella. Before Bram Stoker, the word “vampire” had an almost universally female connotation in film and society: the femme fatale, the lustful seductress. The female that would lead someone to ruin much, drawing a devotion like an addiction. Trent Harris’s The Takeover takes a female vampire, in this case, Maya (Mary Tabour), waging a volatile action-filled battle between her own kind, humans, and “davvers’ or cadavers to rule a post-apocalyptic world.
The vampire world is different, much the same as dark and techno, as in Daybreakers, in which the blood supply has been shortened due to an attempt to destroy the vampires that also killed humans, creating zombies. There is a superweapon that dispenses with the traditional stake in the heart and sunlight, replacing it with simple one-shot incineration. Who controls that will destroy the other?
These vampires do not possess a fear of garlic, religious symbols, or sunlight, nor do they sleep in their native soil. Drawing inspiration from The Walking Dead comic and television program, plus the Underworld film series in which Lycans battle vampires and Humans for supremacy. Maya performs fight sequences and is also dressed in leather, as was Kate Beckinsale’s Selene, although not quite as form-fitting.
“…takes a female vampire…waging a volatile action-filled battle…”
Roaring along, mixing some comic book outrageous violence like left or right cross punches to render vampires, zombies, and humans alike unconscious with a single blow, The Takeover offers a bleak vision of science. No one is safe from the intrigues as Maya is fighting for her survival. She finds she must work with humans, even those with whom she is at odds with close friend Stephanie O Brien (Samantha Wesley Schanz) and General James O’Brien (Dojo Turnbull) even evil family members. Turnbull has a resemblance to a younger Chuck Norris in fatigues in his on-screen work as the tough-talking, punching, no-nonsense military guy with a tender side on a mission to set the world right for personal reasons.
The Takeover moves swiftly through action, and a lot of people cross the path of Maya in her quest to, in a sense, save the vampires from extinction. The actors come off as being sincere in a lot of dialogue in some cases, which dispense with the usual techno /mysticism babble that can get in the way. The result is a budget-conscious battle between two supernatural clans with the humans in the middle that, by the end, isn’t resolved. Plenty of fisticuffs, gunplay, and martial arts are shown by many of the performers bordering on Hong Kong’s “Chop-socky’ style with a limit on practical gore. The Takeover is a good diversion from traditional vampire lore, placing the human in Undead on equal footing to battle the real bloodsuckers, which in this case are military science.
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