Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Night Teeth’ on Netflix, a Sloppy Vampire Flick That’s All Style, Not Enough Action

Night Teeth is the latest in Netflix’s weak string of horror movies for Scary Season 2021. We’ve seen home-invasion stuff, haunted-house things, a surprisingly strong thriller in Fever Dream and now Night Teeth, a vampire movie that’s chock-full of leather pants, ridiculous haircuts and neon. So, so much neon. Oh, and a little blood, but for my nickel, those thrills arrived a little too late.

NIGHT TEETH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The film opens with some exposition that isn’t all that important, but you won’t realize it until you sit through the entire movie, so consider it a public service that I don’t relay the details. Let’s just say that for many many years, Los Angeles has been home to secret vampires, who’ve made a truce with non-vampires. There’s a meaty sequence about a fella named Jay (Raul Castillo) and how his girlfriend is kidnapped, apparently by vampires. Jay’s part of some underworld gangster shizz. But the movie’s not about Jay, and it’s barely about all that exposition, so the first chunk of this movie is just filler. Way to introduce us to the narrative, Night Teeth!

No, the movie eventually gets to its protagonist, Benny (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), Jay’s younger brother, a college student who lives with his grandmother and has vague aspirations about being a DJ mixtape artist or whatever, but vague aspirations are better than no aspirations, I guess. Via Jay, Benny gets a one-night gig driving a swank-ass Escalade around L.A., chauffeuring some high-roller clients — “probably some stoned director,” says Jay. If only! The passengers are Zoe (Lucy Fry) and Blaire (Debby Ryan), who have an all-night party plan programmed into the GPS. They ask Benny to crank the a/c: “Make it icy,” Zoe says. Hmm. Zoe is the intimidatress with bad-girl vibes, sporting asymmetrical hair and a smile you’d trust about as far as you could shotput a Frigidaire freezer. Blair has soft bangs and wide eyes, and the type of demeanor inviting one to tell her all about how much you love your abuela.

Of course, Zoe and Blair arouse suspicion — they return from their party stops with designer totes full of wads and gobs of cash, all spattered with blood. Just another night on the town! By the time they get to a John Wick hotel but for vampires and covered with symbols of a crescent moon Pac-Manning a smaller crescent moon, and Benny wanders inside to find the two women supping on blood direct from the jugulars of two manflesh hunks — well, that’s when things get interesting, theoretically. Those things involve a vampire of ambition named Victor (Alfie Allen), who has no use for any of the exposition we heard in the film’s opening moments, and angles to take control of L.A.’s dark and violent underworld, made evident when he declares, “Once you’re gone, this city’s just one fat neck, waiting to get sucked.” I’ll show you something that sucked, Victor.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Here’s the Night Teeth recipe:

• Take one all-nighter narrative cribbed from Good Time and leach out the escalating tension
• Sprinkle with heavily accessorized vampires from Underworld and Twilight
• Add two (2) Very Long Fireplaces indicating material wealth, lifted from Christian Grey’s penthouse
• Drench with neon from Gunpowder Milkshake, via John Wick
• Undercook for 108 minutes and serve

Performance Worth Watching: Lendeborg is a thoroughly likeable protagonist here, but he’s stuck in a DOA screenplay.

Memorable Dialogue: “You can’t be alive for 200 years and not go a little crazy.” — Zoe proves that she has a bright future writing Hallmark cards for vampires

Sex and Skin: A couple of PG-rated smooches that don’t elevate above a smolder.

Our Take: For its first half, Night Teeth (dopey title, BTW) has a bad habit of telling us about exciting things that happened without actually showing us any exciting things that happen. One sequence features nifty cameos by Sydney Sweeney and Megan Fox — all dolled up in the finest high-class Hot Topic goth-BDSM vampire bustiers, spiky ear adornments and hooded capes — then cuts away, eventually returning to Victor brushing dust off his slacks and essentially saying, “Golly, that was quite a kerfuffle.” It’s supposed to be Victor’s vampire-mobster power grab, but my theory is, he was jealous of their fireplace, because it was longer than his.

The bulk of the movie’s first hour consists of revving the engine and fishing around to find first gear. It’s stylized within an inch of its life, with wide-angle sunny-California shots contrasted by the neon-drenched dampness of wee-hours L.A., detailed backdrops adorned with lots of men who forgot to wear shirts and women in leather and spike heels, all posing and going nowhere. None of this is enough to make us give a damn. So by the time director Adam Randall (I See You) gets the thing rolling, you may have disengaged and switched over to Cocomelon. And even if you do hang on, Night Teeth doesn’t offer anything beyond generic action sequences and the usual cliches, from the I-fell-in-love-with-a-vampire subplot to some half-assed world building to that old weary chestnut, the Interrupted Kiss. And the big climax not only employs High Drama Slo-mo, but barely makes a lick of sense. Jeeves, please show Night Teeth the door.

Our Call: SKIP IT. I saved all the vampire puns for the end: Night Teeth is toothless, it’s bloodless, it’s got dull fangs, it sucks, it has no bite, it needs a good dentist, etc.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Night Teeth on Netflix