Vampiress Review: "Rabid" (2019)

The Gist: A woman who gets an experimental reconstructive surgery after a moped accident has complications which gives her a vampire like hunger while the rest of society exposed suffers a rabies like illness.

Female Vampire Factor:  The main protagonist in the film is an inspiring fashion designer named Rose (Laura Vandervoort)

As explained in the gist one of the side effects for getting her face back is she has to drink a "protein shake" regularly.  This protein shake ends up just being blood basically.  Eventually what's being given to her isn't enough so she resorts to the old raw meet trick.

Then when that isn't enough she begins to black out and hunt for it fresh.

Her final vampiric form has a leech that involuntarily comes from her armpit and feeds on the nearest blood source. This only happens twice during the films final act. 

During the films final act we find out from the Dr/mad scientist he turns out to be that the point of the treatment that was used on her was not about helping severely deformed people but about trying to create immortal beings and Rose was apparently the success.  It was just easier to use the severely deformed as they were more desperate and open to using experimental treatments.  As long as she continued to feed on blood, she will live forever.  If she chooses not too, her body will do all the work for her and she will still live forever but just in a lot of pain and discomfort.

Meanwhile the failed version of the formula gave everyone experimented on a mutated form of rabies. So the background of the film toward the end is society dealing with a pandemic of people basically trying to eat other. The last victim of the rabies you see is Rose's best friend who was attacked on the subway on the way to her fashion shoot off screen and turns as the fashion show she is set to star in is starting.

Final Opinion:  So this is a remake of a film from 1977 of the same name. As far as it as a stand alone it's an ok film.  It's a little lengthy with some things in the beginning that can absolutely be cut out that wouldn't effect the storytelling at all.  Comparing the two the original was much more of a rated R horror film complete with nudity and with Rose being much more predatory where as here she is a sympathetic character trying to fight what she is. Basically this film treats rose as a person, the original literally starts with her getting in the accident and her only screen time is pretty much hunting and feeding on people after that.

It is somewhat therapeutic to watch right now since as I type this it's April 2020 and there is a pandemic going on in the world and the bulk of the last two acts do follow people who have no survival instincts whatsoever completely ignoring a health warning that rabies is going around yet and are still hanging out downtown and attending a fashion show even alongside people showing obvious signs. Even Rose having a ridiculous amount of hallucinations of murdering people is like "I'll go to the doctor tomorrow, have to go to work and see my dress".  No matter how frustrated you are about the world situation if you're reading this in spring 2020.  The stupidity of these people will make you feel better about the real world.

The other thing I find unintentionally comical is that prior to the deformity she gets from the accident (which is pretty gruesome, good job to their special effects dept.) the rose character is supposed to be apparently so ugly that a guy asking her out is a surprise and a big deal.  They do this by hiring an attractive actress, not giving her makeup and then putting glasses on her.

Then after they give her the experimental treatment and she comes out wearing makeup and no glasses they act as if she was basically a gutter troll before and looks completely different when she really doesn't.

Anyway I give this a Vampire Beauty Rating of 2 out of 5.  Vandervoort is attractive but as per usual for her she plays the anti monster that avoids doing monster things and when she does it's either not conventional or off camera.  Best way to see her as a vampire so far is still on the Netflix series V-Wars.  Best way to see this movie to me is still the original.