It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Beautiful, moving film.

The acting in this movie is really good.

A disgraced nightclub bouncer faces off against a psychotic zealot vampire preacher. Quite a crazed concept ripe for hyperactive exploitation thrills, and yet Southern Gothic plays it pretty low key and laconic, for the most part anyway. Moody where other films would have been brash, it's a nice atmosphere piece with gore galore and a gonzo central performance from William Forsythe as Enoch Pitt, a man of the lord who has strayed from the path. Bitten by a vampire, the already sleazy Pitt turns into a full on monster, tearing up the small Deep South town of Redemption and building an army of the undead. Hazel Fortune (Yul Vasquez) is traumatized and broken by the death of his young daughter, until he meets young Hope (Emily Catherine Young), who crosses Pitt's vision and finds herself in mortal danger. This puts the two men on a vengeful collision course of blood, retribution and carnage. Ok, so I've made it sound a little more epic than it actually is, but that's more or less how it goes down. Energetic it ain't, more of a slow burn than anything else. Firmly rooted in B-movie territory in terms of both budget and script, but entertaining and distinctly flavoured nonetheless. Vasquez is moody and four, but dangerous when he needs to be. Forsythe, as usual, is the acting equivalent to a junkyard bulldog let off the chain, chewing scenery faster than he can munch carotid arteries, and loving every campy, frightening minute of it. Not the cream of the horror crop per sé, but reasonable enough Saturday night horror background noise fodder.

Little, small-budgeted vampire tale has William Forsythe as a preacher hunting vampires who, once bitten by a bloodsucker in the act of killing her, becomes even more ferocious and blood thirsty than those he was hunting. Yul Vazquez is Hazel Fortune, an eventual adversary of Forsythe who has been building a flock that could be dangerous if he isn't stopped. Nicole DuPort and her daughter become girls Vazquez will need to protect as Forsythe's flock becomes a major threat in the city they live.Although listed as "Southern Gothic", this carries more of an urban flavor. Forsythe is a worthy candidate for a vampire leader as he has the nasty streak in him to pull it off. The film spends a lot of time with him biting the hell out of people. One member of flock, a human member, just approaches him to converse and is bitten just for the hell of it, it seems. A nasty shotgun blast to the head ends the film rather anti-climatically. It has fangs, but the story is toothless. Very morose in mood and the tone is always a somber drag. Not particularly exciting; nothing about this makes it distinguishable in the vampire subgenre of horror.

I started out watching this last night while fiddling around doing other things, but shortly became involved enough to turn out the lights and plunk down on the floor in my serious watching mode. Vazquez was interesting, DuPont fine, and Forsythe was, as usual, a gas. But that pretty much wrapped up the acting. Too many of the others were either mediocre or bad (like that mysterious "good" vampire). And the plot was somewhat incoherent and illogical. I gave it a 5, a middling review, as the fulcrum of the teeter-totter I felt I was on -- "oh, this is okay"/"oh this is not okay", back and forth. Not a total waste of time, but close.

Trying to get his life back in order, a suicidal bouncer tries to protect the stripper at his club that has become the target of a religious zealot who has become a vampire threatening to unleash Armageddon on mankind through his newfound condition.This could've been a potentially enjoyable and rousing vampire effort is instead a classic wasted opportunity. The main thing on display here is the fact that the religious zealot of a main character is one of the weakest main villains here who is thoroughly unconvincing in the role. Among the bigger issues with that is how he seems intent to mope about the shadows and yammer on in a series of clichéd Biblical quotations and verses concerning the downfall of man or being with his congregation than actually doing anything, and overall there's little here beyond being a vampire to really get anything out of him as a villain. Likewise, his status as a back-woods preacher that barely holds fifty- people in his congregation makes his posturing and world-domination plans way too comical, aided in no small part by his ineffectual human help and lack of vampiric back-up. That also brings up another big issue here in the disjointed plot which is rather chaotic throughout here with the real lack of vampiric activities overall, since there's very few scenes of confrontations between the hunter and his query as the film substitutes this lack of hunting them down for endless scenes of him trying to cope with his life or integrating himself into their family, which are nicely handled for once but lack any action. These scenes hold off the vampire activity so much that there's only a few fleeting moments of action in the whole second half which really slows it down considerably after the great opening right before the finale. These are compounded by the film's good points which signal this could've been something enjoyable, as there's an endless series of great action scenes from the rather intriguing plot that sets itself up quite nicely with the hotel ambush and his initial transformation sequence, the action in the bar and bringing along the quick attacks on the patrons which are rather enjoyable. The finale as well comes off even better with the abduction, a series of fine brawls and the shootouts along the big church confrontation all coming along with having enough vampire violence and great gore to go along with those potentially enjoyable elements. There's enough to see where this could've been great, but instead is a giant wasted opportunity.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, Nudity and children-in- jeopardy.