The Radleys
review by Bobby Blakey
The world of vampires is not only compelling and even sexy at times it sets the stage for so many directions it could go. There are so many vampire rules to follow, but when people do something different and break those rules it could be something great. The latest hoping to do just that is The Radley’s starring Kelly MacDonald, Damian Lewis, Bo Bragason, Harry Baxendale, Jay Lycurgo, and Shaun Parkes from Dream Hors director Euros Lyn. Could this film sink its teeth into something fresh and new or will it fail to hit the veign?
The Radley’s follows a seemingly ordinary family with a dark secret: they are vampires. They choose not to drink blood despite their natural cravings, but their truth is revealed one day.
Heading into the film I only knew of the casting of MacDonald and Lewis and being a fan of both Th Killing and Billions I was interested to see where they took this genre. Diving into it and the look of the poster I wasn’t sure what the tone was going to be, and I guess I thought it was going to be more lighthearted than it ended being. This isn’t a complaint, just unexpected in where it takes things. There are some interesting elements to this family drama, but sadly the vampire element isn’t it.
The story works for what they are doing, but the most out of place element seems to be the vampire part. It is almost as if they are vampires as an after thought as opposed to the real focus with them seemingly throwing all the rules out the window with no explanation or reasoning. This would have been fine and creative had they done something with it, but instead it just kind is.
The family drama works and had they leaned into the vampire horrors a bit more then it would have been a strong original entry into the genre. In this case
though it would have worked way better if they had just let the family drama play out in real life abuse and chaos. The elements that are here for the vampires is fine, but nothing we haven’t seen before a billion times.
The cast are all great but its Lewis on double duty that really carries the film to a place more than it might have been otherwise. He is playing up two completely different personas and goes all in to make the audience believe these are two different people. This opens new depth to the family issues and makes some of the film a lot more interesting than it had been previously, but sadly never far enough to really sell it overall.
Decide for yourself and check out The Radleys in Theaters, On Digital and On Demand now.