12A • 108 mins • 23 October

Director: Paul Weitz

Cast: John C Reilly, Chris Massoglia, Ken Watanabe, Salma Hayek, Michael Cerveris

Rating:

With the fad for bloodsuckers still rising like a corpse from Sunnydale Cemetery, it takes guts to play with accepted vampire tropes. In this adaptation of Darren Shan's young adult books, centred on a travelling sideshow of freaks and grotesque creatures, the undead have no fangs but use sharpened fingernails to slit veins. They breathe gas that knocks humans out and can run (or "flit") really fast, like The Flash. Turning into bats is "bullshit" according to grumpy but sympathetic vamp Crepsley, who recruits class swot Shan to work as his assistant at the circus in exchange for saving his friend's life. Soon Shan realises he's caught in a secret war between Vampires (Crepsley's non-violent gang) and the Vampaneze (grotty murderers).

There's an attractive grotesqueness to the world - like a woman who can regrow limbs offering her finger to a suitor to eat - which sits somewhere between Dickensian pantomime and gross-out comedy. Wooden lead aside, there are excellent character performances, particularly John C Reilly as the droll Crepsley. Crunching a lengthy story into under two hours means the film’s chief flaw is its pace. It lacks emotional impact, the characters' transitions feeling perfunctory, all dread and grief are somehow unreal and the final "be true to yourself" message seems like an afterthought. We're never told why Darren's so keen on spiders or what a half-vampire is - there's no time for explanation.

It lifts the coffin lid for further instalments and there's enough innovation to make a sequel potentially interesting. Cirque Du Freak is a quirky, Carnivàle-tinged alternative to romances like Twilight, but it remains more of a curio than a serious contender for the next gothic craze.

Dave Bradley