Warning: Spoilers Ahead For Night Teeth
Netflix's Night Teeth sees a chauffeur forced to ferry around two vampires, but it picked its least interesting plotline to focus on. Night Teeth is a stylish genre hybrid, while vampire movies themselves often come in all forms. There are the old-fashioned Christopher Lee/Peter Cushing Dracula movies from Hammer, the neo-western of Near Dark or the teen romance of the Twilight saga. There's a vampire film or TV show for just about every mood, with 2021 seeing the arrival of Blood Red Sky - which has been likened to Die Hard with vampires - or the Barbara Crampton fronted Jakob's Wife.
Night Teeth follows the misadventures of Jorge Lendeborg Jr's Benny, who is hired to drive two rich partygoers named Blaire (Debby Ryan) and Zoe (Lucy Fry) around L.A. to various destinations. He soon realizes that not only are they vampires, but they're caught up in a bloody territory war between humans and their own kind. Night Teeth, which also features Megan Fox, is high on style but despite a story that's designed to quite literally keep the characters moving forward, it's oddly lethargic too. It has no real standout action sequences and despite a game cast, the film lacks a certain energy.
This may be down to the focus of Night Teeth, which is a thinly veiled riff on Collateral. Just like that 2004 thriller, the main character is forced by a sinister passenger - or passengers, in Night Teeth's case - to furry them around L.A. to five different locations. In theory, this should be the best way to tell the story; Benny is learning about vampires as the audience does and is their guide through the bloodsucker underworld. While this makes logical sense, Night Teeth is frustrating because it always feels like more exciting things are happening offscreen.
Night Teeth reveals Benny's brother Jay is a vampire hunter chasing Alfie Allen's villain Victor, who has kidnapped his girlfriend. The movie occasionally cuts to Jay and his men as they pursue Victor, with Raúl Castillo (Army Of The Dead) putting in a charismatic turn as he tears around the city. There are points where the story could benefit from a dose of action or horror, but the Benny story often feels like a borderline fish out of water comedy, while his romance with Blaire feels forced. The same goes for the sequence where Victor meets his bosses Grace (Megan Fox) and Eva (Sydney Sweeney).
Not only does this scene tease the vast history of the vampire clans in the city, but Fox and Sweeney inject some life into Night Teeth. Just as soon as they're introduced, not only are they abruptly killed but even that happens offscreen, whereas most viewers will likely wish Euphoria star Sydney Sweeney and Fox stuck around much longer. This isn't the only time this happens either, as the movie often places action sequences or violent moments in the background or just out of frame, like a showdown between Victor and Jay in a restaurant. While the cast all give spirited turns, Night Teeth just doesn't have the energy to go along with the style, and it feels like the narrow focus on the Benny storyline is a key reason for that.