The Kiss (2008 version) (2 Stars)

I wish people wouldn't do this. Every time someone makes a vampire film he sits down and recreates vampire mythology, inventing new origins or powers for what he calls "vampires". We need an Official Vampire Commission to decide on the exact rules for what is and isn't a vampire, as well as specifying what areas may be expanded upon. For instance, any creature that sparkles in the sunlight can't possibly be a vampire, it has to be called something else. Let's agree on a name for the creatures in Stephenie Meyer's books, since they're obviously not vampires. Let's call them woodchuckers. In the next edition of the Twilight books the word "vampire" has to be replaced by "woodchucker" wherever it is used.

And now to "The Kiss" and its own unique rewrite of vampire lore. The first vampire, called the Master, was created by Lucifer. The Master created eight clans and appointed a queen to rule over each clan. The queens are more powerful than normal vampires and can't be killed by any means whatsoever.

The film begins with one of the vampire queens, Santa Maria Del Oro Corazon, the ruler of the Clan of the Snake, being captured and buried after a feud with another clan. Despite being dehydrated, or rather desanguinated, she cannot die, and for the next two hundred years she cries out for someone to rescue her. Finally her voice is heard by a high school student called Jeremy, who has better hearing than most due to years of listening to heavy metal on his Ipod. He digs her up and nurtures her back to health, and then the two of them fall in love. Santa Maria wants revenge against the other vampire queen, but first she has to establish a base of operations, so she goes on a killing spree in the town.

The film is slow moving. The only parts that I enjoyed were the brief glimpses of nudity. As soon as the vampire queens put their clothes back on I lost interest. The story itself isn't so bad, it has more promise than "Twilight", but it could have been filmed a lot better.