Surviving your first proper job is the subject of Canadian vampire horror/comedy, The Death of Alice Blue. But office politics aside, this long-awaited film chronicles a killer’s first week at work, but is let down by its confusing narrative.
Set in the grim world of Advertising, the film follows Alice Blue (Alex Appel) as she experiences her first week as a junior copywriter at the Raven Advertising firm in Toronto. Over-protected by her mother, bullied by her colleagues and befriended by the office rejects, she soon realises that there is something very strange going on at Raven, and she will soon be at the very heart of it.
The legend of vampires, their legacy and their powers have long fascinated directors, moviegoers, authors and others. But with the interest in vampires hitting a peak, and with the popularity of the Twilight saga catapulting the genre to a new, and frankly stratospheric high, the interest in our fanged friends shows no signs of waning. While it was originally scheduled to be included in Dead by Dawn’s 2009 programme, The Death of Alice Blue is not a new vampire movie, nor can its creation be credited to the ongoing obsession with vampires, and it’s clear that Bench’s intention was to make a vampire movie for everyone who’s ever been stuck in a dead-end job with no chance of growth or promotion. While this is something that we can all relate to, because we’ve wished that we could get the recognition that we deserve in the workplace, or one-up some of our colleagues, there’s just something missing from this film. While the story is a good one, the way it’s executed is confusing, and a little disjointed; the story is subject to sudden jumps and twists, characters seem to change without warning, this feeling of confusion could be what’s meant to be experienced by the audience, but in all truthfulness, it made the film hard to follow. While the way the film was executed was difficult to understand, there is something about The Death of Alice Blue, there is a spark of ingenuity, of originality there, but it’s lost under the film’s confusing delivery. One for anyone who’s ever worked for ‘the man’, Bench’s film is an unpolished but promising addition to the ever-expanding vampire film genre.