The Vampire's Assistant: bet Darren didn't think digging a grave was on his to-do list this morning.

Cast: Chris Massoglia, John C.Reilly, Patrick Fugit, Ken Watanabe
Director: Paul Weitz
Screenwriters: Paul Weitz, Brian Helgeland

If nothing else, you’ve got to hand it to Universal because they’ve got their timing just right. Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant releases in cinemas one week before Halloween and one month before the second installment of one of the world’s biggest film franchises, Twilight. Though the fact that it’s a book-to-film adaptation of a story about vampires is, sadly, the only thing the two have in common.

Darren Shan (Massoglia) is just your average 16 year old high school kid with a fascination for spiders. His best friend Steve (Josh Hutcherson) meanwhile, is obsessed with vampires. One gloomy night when Darren and Steve stumble across the Cirque Du Freak (circus of freaks), their actions accidentally break a 200 year old truce between two sparring vampire groups, the vampires and the vampanese. Enter vampire master Larten Crepsley (C.Reilly), who thinks the only way to solve problems would be to make Darren a half-vampire, his assistant in fact, to protect his vampire clan.

So we can just about cope with the idea of there being this separation of vampires and “vampanese” (the latter of whom feed on humans), sure, but as the film unfolds the strange, inconceivable and downright ridiculous plot twists just keep coming and coming. It seems that whenever newly bloodthirsty Darren is presented with a sticky situation, he suddenly finds out about a new “power” he has. Chris Massolgia is a young actor with sparse experience and it shows in his flat, deadpan character’s personality; his unconvincing behaviour is one of the reasons the film simply doesn’t work.

Another reasonably huge reason I don’t feel like I can support it is because it is centred on the belief that anyone that looks different to an average person is a freak. In the travelling circus we find Salma Hayek (who, despite having less than five minutes airtime, is on all the posters for the film and billed as a main character), a woman who can grow a beard, and Willem Dafoe (the five minute rule also applies to him), another vampire, and Patrick Fugit (…and again. How much did they get paid for this?), a lad with slimy snake-like skin. While these are obviously fictional ‘freak’-like traits, the film does little to show its diversity in say, the ‘normal’ scenes, for example at school, at Darren’s house, etc. The message is clear: this white, middle-class, skinny American neighbourhood is exclusive and no “freak” can be a part of it. Is that the kind of message kids should be fed nowadays?

This is the first installment of what is planned to be a huge chain (just like Twilight) in accordance with Darren Shan’s (not the kid in the film) bestselling book series. Given that the film has received little marketing, I’m hoping Universal see sense before commissioning round two of the travelling ‘freak show’.

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant is released in cinemas on 23rd October via Universal Pictures

By Cathy Reay