September, that financially irrelevant month between the Summer and awards season, has long been a dumping ground for Hollywood; weeks later,  it’s cruel repercussions are still lurking around in the guise of such horrible pictures as Couples Retreat and The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. Rest assured, Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is not as bad as those two titles, but that’s a little like pointing out that herpes is not quite so serious as syphilis.
Cirque du Freak ought to have been the start of something big. The shed-load selling literary franchise from Limerick-born author, Darren Shan, is not quite Twilight, but it was certainly purchased by Universal Pictures with that precise aim in mind. Unhappily, as Variety and every other industry minded periodical has already pointed out, the franchise looks to be over before it has even began. Thank you very much, Mr. Paul Weitz, whose brother Chris, you may recall, killed off the His Dark Materials sequence with a similarly dire adaptation of The Golden Compass.
At least The Golden Compass had big-arsed special effects. The Vampire’s Assistant could pass for a Bosco Halloween episode. This is, contrary to the crummy production design, meant to be an epic tale of good versus evil; Darren (Chris Massoglia) is just like any other teenager, until the day he encounters the Cirque du Freak and a vampire named Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly, completely miscast) who turns the lad into one of the undead, much to the chagrin of his BF (Josh Hutcherson) who is soon seduced by a rival vampire faction.  Sadly, teenage vampires have rarely looked as lame as they do here. The production values are cheap and nasty.