Webseries Review: Bleed

By Melissa Voelker

Vampires are taking over the universe. They are forcing their way into books, flaunting themselves on TV, and now they are even taking over the world wide web. With all this over saturation of the fanged monsters in the media, someone has to take vamps to a whole new level to make them interesting again. The webseries “Bleed,” created by Matt Lawson and Taterfight Productions, promises a lot. The website advertises it as “Kevin Smith meets Buffy,” which certainly sounds like it could be cool – and chatty. But while “Bleed” manages to be amusing at moments and pretty neat at other moments, I’m not sure it quite fits the bill as taking vampires to a whole new level.

“Bleed” gives us two chatty main characters who find themselves turned into vampires, which is more of a surprise than it should be considering the person who changes them over tells them first. After that it is all a matter of learning to feed and not attacking each other’s girlfriends and attending lame ‘vampyre’ parties.

Eric Morales and Alan Seales, who play the main guys Brian and Perry, are really quite good in their roles. They banter back and forth with barely a stumble, and they seem to fit naturally into their scenes (instead of standing stiffly around looking very obviously away from the camera). I was a little less impressed with Whitney Griffin (Evil Lynne) and Hilary Trelease (Mistress Carmela). Evil Lynne just wasn’t very scary or sexy or vampiric to me. And Mistress Carmela stumbled a bit over her lines. As the series progresses they all get better in their roles, however, and I’m sure they’ll be at professional level soon.

The “Bleed” vampires aren’t the most unique or exciting that I’ve seen lately. There is no sparkly skin or gaping mouths of gnarly teeth or half naked blonde Vikings with smoldering eyes.*  In fact the ones in this webseries seem downright wimpy. Evil Lynne chases after Perry at one point and has a hard time overtaking him. Both Perry and Brian try to attack other vampires because they can’t seem to tell them apart from other humans. And apparently their bloodlust is minimal, because Brian still hasn’t fed yet by the third episode, which seems to take place quite a while after the first. Wouldn’t he have starved to death in that time?

While most scenes are shot well and the camera work is above average, the webisodes seem inconsistently made. The first episode looked and felt quite different than the ones that followed after it. Where the first ep had great comic book framed transitions, the third episode felt a little too much like a sitcom and the fourth had a bunch of transitions and cut scenes and music that wasn’t used in any episodes before it. I find it a little difficult to get into the story of a show if every episode feels like it belongs to a different series altogether.

What “Bleed” does really well is bring on the snarky humor. They poke fun at the vampire genre, as well as the lovely losers who hang around on the fringes of the goth/vampire society. One particularly hilarious episode involves Brian and Perry going to a vampire party made up of bizarre posers who wouldn’t know a real vampire if it bit them in the throat. The dialogue between the two leads remains quick and snappy even after they become blood suckers. They don’t lie around moping or crying or wishing for release from an endless unlife like a lot of emo vampires do. They are basically just themselves – with some new, sharper teeth.

There are currently only five webisodes available for “Bleed,” and since it started in 2006 its taking the production a while to be completed. Even though there are certainly some things that aren’t great with this show, it has real potential. I’ll probably stick around for a while longer, to see Brian finally drink blood if nothing else.

“Bleed” can be seen at: http://Bleedseries.blip.tv.

*”Twilight,” “30 Days of Night,” and “True Blood.”

About Melissa: By day a mild-mannered tv station receptionist, by night a fighter of crime and corruption in the dirty streets of Spokane, WA . . . or maybe not so much. More like a hyperactive, anal-retentive daytime receptionist and a melodramatic, hyperactive nighttime fangirl who only wishes she could be a fighter of crime and champion of justice (except that would lead to getting my super costume all dirty and I hate doing laundry.) Though my intent has always been to write bestselling novels and live a life of wealth and luxury, putting my talents for snarkiness and word doodling together while letting my geek flag fly suits me just fine – for now.

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