Written and Directed by Noah Segan
Staring Noah Segan and Victoria Moroles
Runtime: 97 minutes
Steaming On Shudder November 22

by Billie Anderson, Staff Writer

“What happens when you go out during the day?”

“I fucking explode”

It’s difficult to dissuade me from a vampire flick—I was a Twilight teen after all. When I first heard Noah Segan was writing, directing, and starring in his own vampire film, I was counting down the days until I could see it. The vampire genre has been crowded as of late, with the What We Do in the Shadows (2014) film, and the What We Do in the Shadows (2019) series, to the Twilight saga (2008-2012), Let the Right One In (2008), Morbius (2022), and the new Interview with a Vampire (2022) series to name a few. To stand out in a genre with such a history and diversity in dramatics is a hard feat, especially for a directorial debut. What I expected was a lot; what I got was so much more.

Blood Relatives tells the story of a supernatural family reunion between Francis (Noah Segan), a Jewish, vintage car-loving vampire and his 15-year-old estranged daughter Jane (Victoria Moroles)—half vampire half human—who is seeking out answers about her familial heritage after the recent loss of her mother. The story is just as touching as it is funny, with Francis’ underlying loneliness and need for companionship explained by his history; a history dating back to the Holocaust and tied to his Jewish heritage. This film is trying to accomplish three overlapping narratives in its 90 minutes run: first, it’s a vampire film, second, it’s a film about Jewish identity, and third, it’s a story about a deadbeat dad and his attempts to reconnect with his rebellious daughter.

With his concerned eyebrows, his deadpan performance, and his feeble voice, Noah Segan is such an unbelievable vampire, which makes this film even more compelling. This feels like a special acting moment for Segan—he isn’t playing to his strengths as the goofy comic relief character, although those moments cannot help but appear. He doesn’t fit into the tropes (and there are many), in any capacity. Beyond following the “rules” of the vampire—asking for permission when entering a building—his identity as a Jewish man always overshadows his identity as a bloodsucker. Watching this film felt like simultaneously watching Segan reconstitute the vampire in its historical connotations, while also birthing a new genre of vampire.

The final thing I want to note is the film’s score. I’m a sucker for a good film score (aren’t we all). I have a very elite playlist where I add my favorite songs from films and television shows—the list is really the best of the best. The opening song of Blood Relatives made the playlist with its first note. A fun score really makes a movie feel special and this film fits into that Wes Anderson (Alexandre Desplat) or Rian Johnson (Nathan Johnson) genre soundtrack style that gets me wanting to leave my career and solve murder mysteries for the rest of my life.

While the film isn’t particularly dynamic, I wouldn’t call that a flaw. The narrative doesn’t grant itself the time to go deep, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. There’s something comforting and quaint about seeing Segan let his script exist in the present. While there’s ties to the past and the history of his characters, there’s an overarching narrative that none of what happened before the film started matters because getting the two leads together provides them both with a clean slate: he’s now a father, and she’s now a vampire. By reconnecting the vampire myth to the fear of the other, specifically the English fear of an Eastern European other, for the first time since Dracula, Segan has managed to breathe genuinely new life into an often-stale genre. As his first feature film, this is a knockout—had this been his second or third, it would have been fantastic to see the story lean more into the narratives surrounding Jewish identity as much as it was about family and otherness, but I recognize there is only so much you can accomplish in a 90-minute film.

The film is always funny and well-paced, so it never feels slow. While some viewers might argue that the dialogue isn’t as subtle as it tries to be, I love it. I’m into the over-the-top, goofy, and often cringe stylistic choices Segan made here. Segan and Moroles both have such expressive acting styles that lend to their hypnotizing on-screen chemistry. I could watch a film of just them bantering back and forth about car types, and I couldn’t care less about cars. If Segan keeps up with this filmmaking style, he has the potential to make some really great and original genre-rejuvenating films in his future.