The first thing about Perfect Creature that made me wary was the blurb on the DVD box: "Underworld meets Children of Men". This set my warning bells a-ringing as I usually find that if someone has to place two different movies together to describe another one said movie is usually an unoriginal, usually incomprehensible, mess. This flick doesn't quite fall victim to that curse and writer-director Glenn Standring definitely brings some interesting ideas to the table, it's just that when the script shifts gears after the first third I started to lose interest in the whole thing. This is one stylistically solid effort with a good idea but it succumbs to being too talky and trying to stuff in too many sub-plots into its eighty-eight minute running time.

Right off the bat I'd like to proclaim how much I love the production design that mixes 30's noir with futuristic elements. It's the perfect look for the story, makes it look a lot higher-budgeted than it probably is, and sets a proper mood. In the near future, a sect of vampires known as The Brotherhood, have sworn to protect humankind. But said balance is soon to be thrown out of whack. Into the picture comes police detective Lilly (Saffron Burrows) who has to team-up with the fanged Silus (Dougray Scott) in order to track down his brother, Edgar (Leo Gregory) who is killing mortals at will.

It's in the first third of the movie I thought to myself, "this might actually turn out to be pretty damn good", as Standring handles everything more like a serial killer movie as our characters go through the motions of investigating the crime scenes and tracking their killer. It's a refreshing way to set-up this type of movie, but then things lose their early edge as the story decides to flip its focus when Edgar ends-up being captured and is also carrying a deadly virus that might wipe out humankind for good. It all falls to Silus and Lilly (who's relationship is under developed at best) to save us all when Edgar violently escapes to continue his ways. This leads up to a pretty dumb finale (that includes, of all things, a steam gun).

Perfect Creature is the type of movie that gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand I appreciate that Standring has attempted to bring something original to the table, I was quite drawn in by the whole premise, and the movie looks great. However, on the flipside of the coin, I also had to stave off disappointment when things get more muddled than they need to be. It's fine and dandy when you want to build up a kind of mythos and alternate reality behind your movie but you can't make it too complex if you're going to be bottled into a shorter amount of time. Things do end with a set-up for a sequel and I'm surprisingly intrigued to see if it ever happens as I find the whole idea of fleshing out the background of The Brotherhood and revisiting this old-meets-new utopia incredibly appealing.

Upon writing this review I stumbled across various sources (them mostly being viewers commenting on IMDB) citing Perfect Creature's similarity to 2001's The Breed, which proved to be true once I started looking into things. I'm not entirely sure if Standring was aware of the earlier production when he was writing the script but their premises seem to be an awful lot alike. However, the difference being (since I have seen both) that the Michael Oblowitz directed film suffers from having obnoxious characters and some out-of-place martial arts fights while Standring's film takes a more mature approach. I'm not going to hold this against the movie but it is definitely worth noting here. (Chris Hartley, 5/7/08)

Directed By: Glenn Standring.
Written By: Glenn Standring.

Starring: Dougray Scott, Saffron Burrows, Leo Gregory, Scott Wills.