Local director Glenn Standring's second feature is a sci-fi horror set in a retro-futuristic New Zealand where humans coexist with a race of intellectual vampires called The Brotherhood.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2007
Perfect Creature 2006
Set in an alternative 1960s New Zealand known as Nuovo Zelandia, writer-director Glenn Standring's (The Irrefutable Truth about Demons) second feature imagines a race of intellectual bloodsuckers called The Brotherhood. Created 300 years ago in a genetic experiment, these highly-evolved vampires also function as scientists, providing humanity with essential vaccines in exchange for donations of blood. When renegade vampire Edgar (Leo Gregory) transgresses society's fragile order, it is up to his brother Silus (Dougray Scott) and mortal policewoman Lilly (Saffron Burrows), to hunt him down and restore peace. Much praised for its stark, moody production design, Perfect Creature evokes the atmosphere of Victorian era London (actually filmed in the more gothic parts of Auckland and Dunedin) with retro-future industrial machines, ancient tenement buildings and dystopian city streets. Science fiction and horror coalesce in this refined, suspenseful vampire film that encompasses race, serial killings and the human capacity for hope. — Bianca Zander