Livestock

LIVESTOCK is the low budget vampire horror flick written and directed by Christopher DiNunzio. It features a small cast and a moderate crew. LIVESTOCK doesn’t waste any time when it comes to the plot and rings in at a trim 76 minutes. The film itself centers on a cult of vampires known as “The Pack”, and also on a small group of young female friends. They’re all about to meet and have their lives turned upside down.

As much as I’m starting to get tired (and I think that a lot of us out that are) of the plethora of vampire genre movies out there, I really feel that this movie should be given a chance. Due to its shorter run time it’s easy to digest (pun intended) for a quick dose of gore and story. It plays a lot like the first FRIDAY THE 13TH as far as tone and cinematography are concerned. The gore and special effects are really where this movie stands out and credit certainly has to go to Hannah Sanders for the makeup effects which looked both realistic and visceral.

The acting is actually pretty good in this flick, and all the main characters, it can be seen, are very into their parts. A little fault that I can find is the delivery of some of the lines which felt to me like they were read verbatim from the script (just general everyday phrases that, if they were a little more improvised might have come out more naturally). This isn’t to say the actor is at fault, there is a good possibility that the director/writer was just a stickler to the written material, which isn’t always a bad thing (Kevin Smith made at least his first six movies based on the premise that the script is gospel). In this case I think that the actors might have needed a little extra leniency to play with the script. But understandably on a low budget film such as this time was most certainly an issue so they probably didn’t have as many takes to work with as the editor (Melanie Kotoch) would have liked.

On that note the film is edited quite well, and the pacing is fairly consistent throughout. The sound and music on this film are fairly good as well. Overall, for an ultra-low budget film such as this I would say it is definitely worth a quick peek at if you happen to catch it online via Amazon VOD or Netflix.