Movie Nation

Every so often, we remember to tape over our built-in laptop camera, turn off location tracking on our smarter-than-us phone and that there are other search engines aside from all-knowing/all-coveting Google.

But for the most part, we try not to think about the fundamental question of our age — “Do You Trust Your Computer?” 

Chris Paine, director of “Who Killed the Electric Car?” and “Revenge of the Electric Car” rounded up scientists, software engineers, journalists, futurists and filmmakers to discuss the reasons for asking that “trust” question about the gadgets we let do our taxes, plan our trips, perform surgery and soon, drive our “electric” cars.

And in this eye-opening, sometimes chilling film, he talked to a wide range of the engaged and the clueless among us on the street and on the beach, and posed that question to one and all. “Do we?” “Should we?”

With the birth of “machine learning” largely unremarked when Google came along, with digital “super intelligence” on the horizon, with science fiction, “a lie that tells the truth” warning us from Asimov’s “I, Robot” to “Terminator: Judgement Day” to “Ex Machina,” maybe it’s time, one and all in this film seem to agree, that we wrestled with the morality, ethics and simple safety of the technology that has taken over our lives.

As a surgeon makes the ethical choice of not continuing a computer/robot-assisted brain aneurysm operation where the probability of success has slipped, mid-surgery, declares, “It’s not the future, it’s the present.”

It’s a brisk blur of a documentary that ventures from “How could a smarter machine not be a better machine?” to “the Faustian bargain” we’ve made with technology that will render 7,000,000 data entry jobs and 4,000,000  driving/transporting jobs (very soon) to medicine, law, journalism and other careers obsolete.

A former deputy Secretary of Defense, Christine Fox, discusses the debate over “autonomous weapons” (not just drones, but drones that decide who to kill) to Stanford professor Jerry Kaplan noting that “machines are natural psychopaths” as the film touches on the stock market’s “flash crash” of 2010 and computerized trading’s soulless role in it, the worrying collection of facts and problem areas swells.

And then we’re told that worrying won’t help. Not at all. If there’s something this lively film lacks, peppered as it is with cautionary words from IBM “Watson”-creator David Ferrucci to Elon Musk, interspersed with film clips from movies ranging back to “Forbidden Planet” to “The Matrix” and “Ex Machina,” it’s that simple solution, that “action” step at the end of a persuasive speech or argument.

“Awareness” of how Big Data allows companies like Cambridge Analytica and malevolent states like Russia to custom-message the impressionable and manipulate democracy, of how “we’ll be helpless” as computers get better at assembling our profile and learning how to manipulate us, will not be enough.

Adaptation will have to be rapid, human/machine interfaces will be more elaborate. There’s a Cyborg in our future. If we don’t want to be utterly subsumed by machines, we’ll have to become part machine.

As filmmaker Jonathan Nolan (“Westworld/Interstellar” screenwriter, and brother of director Christopher) notes that “We’re the last analog object in a digital universe,” questions like “Can A.I. (artificial intelligence) be compassionate?” leap forward in importance.

When Hiroshi Ishiguro demonstrates “Erica,” the most advanced/human–like, empathy-recognizing/empathy-generating android in Japan, gosh you hope so.

But even that isn’t reassuring.  “A.I. doesn’t have to be evil to destroy humanity,” Elon Musk notes. “We might just be in the way.”

MPAA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: David Ferruci, Rana El Kaliouby, Christine Fox, Elon Musk, Hiroshi Ishiguro

Credits:Directed by Chris Paine, script by Mark Monroe. A Cinetec release.

Running time: 1:17

Taraji P. Henson runs up against the glass ceiling, gets a little voodoo brew help with “What Men Want” and hears every guy’s innermost thoughts.

Lust, greed, passing gas, it’s all in there. Tracy Morgan also stars, but neither he nor Taraji P. has the funniest line in this trailer.

“I thought black people stopped drinking tea after “Get Out?”

This January, Taraji gets another shot at releasing a mid-winter star vehicle/hit. Let’s hope “What Men Want” out-performs “Proud Mary.”

Here’s the social media era in dating perfectly summed up by a master of the “swipe right” hook-up.

“It’s like going to a bar on Friday night, without everything that sucks about a bar. On Friday night.”

For Harris, cavalierly played by Jack Cutmore-Scott of “Kingsman,””Dunkirk” and TV”s “Deception,” is an absolute terror on Tinder — actually its legal-department-approved-clone, named “Head Over Heels.” A 20something Internet Age ad-man who crushes it at work, entertains himself playing online first-person shooter games, each night’s adventure begins in a bar with a lot of swiping right on dating aps.

She shows up, grins and giggles all around, he plays “Let me read your ‘drink aura,” which he inevitably does — adding “shots” at the end of it.

And they wind up in bed. Night after night, which ends when he slips out of bed with barely an “I had fun” kissoff, because he did, an implied “I’ll call you” promise, because he never does.
“Bad Match” is what happens when he hooks up with Rachel, played with an Erika Christensen (“Swimfan”) 2.0 verve by Lili Simmons  (TV’s “Hawaii Five-O” and “Ray Donovan”).

She walked into the bar, a literal “Devil in a Red Dress,” and we know Harris is about to get some serious comeuppance for his faithless ways.

Because as determined as he is to continue his routine, it’s that second night — a pointed, irresistible sext leading to pin-your-ears-back sex — that’s the clincher. She spends the night at HIS place, turns off HIS alarm so he misses his important pitch meeting, and it’s all downhill from there.

“What kind of a nutjob shuts off your alarm?”

What kind of “nutjob” stays in your apartment all day, fetches groceries and cooks you a nice meal to make it up to you?

“What’s a little breaking and entering between friends?”

“The nerve,” his friends (Brandon Scott, Kahyun Kim) harrumph with him in the bar later that week. He’s tactfully, he thinks, moved on, gently blown off “What’re you doing right now, lover?” sexts and held his temper when she starts badgering him at work.

“She’s certifiable. I’m just glad I don’t have any pets.”

Yeah, when she overhears his cruelty, she cusses him out. And as things start to unravel in his life, he starts seeing her in a Glenn Close wig with a carving knife, “Fatal Attraction” redux.

Harris, a “slave to my genitals” who has this whole “dating” scene all figured out, is a creep. He may know “The Tao of Swiping,” may excuse his behavior with an “I just don’t get a girlfriend vibe from her,” time and again.

But when you lose your job, the FBI “SWATs” your apartment to find child porn on your laptop, maybe it’s time to do some soul searching, make amends or at least flee.

As you’d expect, Harris does none of that, in spite of the advice of a lawyer. And that’s when things turn violent.

Writer-director David Chirchirillo — the darkly-comic indie “Cheap Thrills” was his debut film — has filmed an efficient, chatty, expectations-flipper of a thriller built around a “hero” played with darkly comic bravado. Because Harris is really hung up on “Fatal Attraction.” 

“When I’m dead, I hope you think about this and it makes you very very sad.”

It’s a short, generally brisk movie which is meant to make the bros watching it think about “Who’s the real villain here?” Because Harris has a hint of sociopath about him, at least in the ways he regards women.

He fears (just a bit) his boss (Noureen DeWulf) and flips the power script with virtually ever other woman he meets — because he can. That’s how Chirchirillo wants us to read him, anyway.

I can’t say the film makes that leap obvious or intriguing, just barely plausible. “Bad Match” is too short and formulaic to give us anything to really chew on.

The unfortunately-named Cutmore-Scott makes Harris a likable lout, and Simmons makes Rachel every screen stereotype of “needy” and “unstable” date.

Whatever epilogue twists are thrown at us (obvious, too), the soul-searching we should be doing is muted, an afterthought. If you think “Wow, this is great,” try the “flipping the gender of the protagonists test.”  Still think the film plays fair with expectations, point of view and rough justice?

MPAA Rating: TV-MA

Cast: Jack Cutmore-Scott, Lili Simmons, Brandon Scott, Noureen DeWulf

Credits: Written and directed by  David Chirchirillo. An Orion/Gravitas release.

Running time: 1:23

It’s Michael Moore’s End Times documentary about the Trump Era — Nazis, racists, contaminated water, air, workplaces, etc.

A culture caught in mid-rage-spasm, an ignorance spiral that has put us in the hands of a Russian puppet, no problem solvable thanks to Russian influence, interference and cash propping up anti-American organizations like the NRA, which divide us and raise the level of helplessness. It’s all here.

“Fahrenheit 11/9” opens Sept. 21.

Writer/director Justin Lee must have a rich daddy. Or Sugar Daddy. State film commission incentive money. Something.

He’s getting a lot of low-budget features into theaters, Bigfoot horror, Western, wilderness pictures usually. And while I am down with his settings and subject matter, I’m mystified at how A) pictures this bad get made and released and B) how he’s not getting better. “Big Legend,” middling, not quite awful, “A Reckoning,” irredeemably bad.

“Any Bullet Will Do,” his vengeance Western, is Lee’s third release of the summer. Costco package deal or something?

As always, I dig the look, the setting. And there’s a good line in the trailer of this brother-hunting-brother (“Winchester ’73”?) tale.

Wake up the rest’a the boys. We got MURDERIN’ to do.”

“Any Bullet Will Do” finds limited release Sept. 4.

The funniest thing about a teen comedy seen years after its release is the way its jokes, its cultural reference, its music and its cast have aged.

Thus, a comedy that gives us the early days of the use of “beyotch,” Emma Roberts at her child starlet peak, prelapsarian Alex Pettyfer and Juno Temple the last time she could possibly be labeled “innocent.”

A spoiled, out-of-control Malibu teen “going through a rather difficult stage” is sent off to boarding school where they know how to deal with a “Wild Child” — in England.

Because that’ll teach her.

Roberts has the title role, Poppy, a Malibu Barbie, oldest daughter of a widower (Aidan Quinn) who arranges “the perfect Malibu welcome” for Dad’s new girlfriend on moving day, allowing the locals to ransack the moving truck loaded with everything new girlfriend owns.

Nothing for it for Poppy then but venerable Abbey Mount School, in rainy, rural England, with its tradition, hierarchy and no cell service. Poppy is hell-bent on not fitting in.

The girls say grace together at meals, Poppy chants.

“Namaste!”

She insults her “big sister,” the one supposed to show her the ropes (Kimberly Nixon) and doesn’t let “head girl” Harriet (Georgia King) scare her.

“Watch the “smere,” girlfriend — 200 goats died for this!”

The matron (Shirley Henderson) is “Hogwarts” scary, and  the headmistress (the late Natasha Richardson) isn’t open to bargaining over any “rights” Poppy figures she’s entitled to.

“To me a negotiation’s rather like a nightclub — not something I tend to go into.”

Get used to living in a dormitory, “LIGHTS OUT,” and lacrosse, “No wireless” and endless rain which does her Jimmy Choos and sundress collection no good at all.

To her pal back home, “these girls are all ugly losers who think ‘mani-pedi’ is some sort of Latin greeting,” “village idiots.”

“What do you hope to get out of this school, Poppy?”

“To get out of this school.”

Her plan, the only one the other girls will conspire to help her with, is to get expelled. Get blamed for everything, rile the administration, prank the pool (epic), etc.

“It’s on like Donkey Kong!”

“Wild Child” is a sassy, perky and just-potty-mouthed-enough to seem edgy, with “incredibly slutty and available” and “How many boys have you shagged?” jokes (just among us girls) about how to “snog on” the headmistress’s hunky son (Pettyfer), who like everyone on staff at Abbey Mount, drives a classic British motorcar — an Austin Healey “Frogeye” Sprite.

One hit the town used-clothing shop for a play dress-up montage so that Poppy can makeover the fashion-impaired Brits, one trip to the local beauty parlor operated by “the only gay in the village” (Nick Frost, a stitch), trying to pass themselves off as housewives in the liquor store,, a “Malibu moment” here and there — some bits are funnier than others, but even the near-groaners land lightly.

“This is a themed costume party, not a dwarf prostitute’s convention!”

The Hertfordshire locations are lovely, the settings quaint and cute and oh-so-English. As are the girls, the staff and hunky Freddy.

“Are you gay?”

“Just English!”

These movies all turn in the same general direction and at the same point in the story arc, so no sense acting all surprised (unless you’re the 15-and-under demo this is intended for). Poppy’s going to lose some of the brat, and the Brits will lose some of their Brit.

Editor turned director Nick Moore (he cut “Love Actually” and many a screen comedy) handles the action, such as it is, with flair and lets the laughs — many of them verbal — land with a thunk and not a thud.  A favorite line? Freddy’s cover for what sounds like a fart.

“Better an empty house than an angry tenant!”

Roberts was 17 when she made “Wild Child,” fresh off “Nancy Drew” and “Aquamarine” and TV’s “Unfabulous.” She plays Poppy rather broadly, TV style. She was better in “Nancy Drew,” and consistently better better later on. She would go on to see her child stardom fade, even announcing retirement at one point. The roles came back and more TV beckoned instead.

Temple, then better known as a director’s daughter, is adorable as the noisy basket case in need of a makeover and “confidence” boost here. She’s played romantic leads and far too many hookers, junkies and tarts for her own good since.

No kid today would have seen “Wild Child” in a theater, and not many adults, then or now, did either. Perhaps it was seen as damaged and “dangerous,” with a big “Don’t try this at home” streak. The irresponsible stuff here is “alarming” only in the finale, the rest? Hijinx, nothing more.

Is it Netflixable? You bet.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for some coarse and suggestive content, sex references and language – all involving teens

Cast: Emma Roberts, Lexi Ainsworth, Shelby Young, Juno Temple, Aidan Quinn, Natasha Richardson, Shirley Henderson, Nick Frost,

Credits:Directed by Nick Moore, script by Lucy Dahl. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:33

“There’s something WRONG with the new babysitter!”

Jacob (Joshua Rush) is just a tween, but he’s got clues.

“Anna” is letting them tear up stuff to make costumes, paint on the walls. She tells them a bedtime version of “The Three Little Bears” that’s hand-drawn and oh-so-DARK.

Hide and go seek just gives her the chance to look the place over, find the family’s strong box, learn its secrets.

“Mom and Dad aren’t HERE now,” is her only rule.

Sometime between “Let’s see what happens when we drop your hamster into the constrictor’s tank” and “Let’s watch mom and Dad’s homemade porno,” Jacob puts it all together. Anna is NOT angling for a tip.

“She’s not a REAL sitter!”

“Emelie” is a short, slow-building nightmare built around an exceptionally creepy turn by Sarah Bolger (“The Spiderwicke Chronicles,” TV’s “Once Upon a Time,” “The Tudors”).

We’ve already seen the “real” Anna snatched in the opening moments. We’ve seen Fake Anna wipe the blood off her shoes and shout “Bye, Mom!” into the stranger’s house she was sitting on, waiting to be picked up by the kids’ father.

And we’ve gotten a very bad vibe from this stranger with the sweet, disarming smile the moment she asks the parents (Susan Pourfar, Chris Beetem) an odd question on their way out the door.

“Do the kids have their own phones?”

Anna watches the parents drive away, locks the kids in for the night. Let the “games” begin.

Music video and TV commercial director Michael Thelin, working from a textbook lean, suspense-building script by Richard Raymond and Harry Herbeck, is grudging with his frights in the early acts.

Bolger turns a cruel come-hither look on young Rush, and a callous “things die” cruelty on Carly Adams and Thomas Bair, who play the younger siblings. She has essentially two jaw-dropping moments to play, and knocks both of them out of the park.

When Emelie invites Jacob into the bathroom with her and gets him to locate a femine hygiene product, you know he’s either got a story his tweenage buddies will never believe or that he’ll be scarred for life. Emelie has an idea just how long that “life” will be.

The foreshadowing is entirely too on the nose, and the “explainer” flashbacks almost unnecessary.  But “Emelie” is a jarring, jolting entry in the “Hand that Rocks the Cradle” genre, a too-obvious thriller that still lands a sucker punch or three.

MPAA Rating: TV-MA

Cast: Sarah Bolger, Joshua Rush, Thomas Bair, Carly Adams, Susan Pourfar, Chris Beetem

Credits:Directed by Michael Thelin, script by Richard Raymond and Harry Herbeck. A Dark Sky release.

Running time: 1:22

It’s going to make a metric ton of money, and everybody likes it — most everybody reviewing it, anyway.

A 100 percent approval on Rotten Tomatoes does not lie, though it hides the shades of grey in opinion about “Crazy Rich Asians,” an ultra-light, shallow but upbeat and goofy riff on that corner of the One Percent who came from China and scattered across the Pacific Rim to find their fortune.

Which is why we’ll look at the Metacritic ratings for this one. The “How MUCH do you love me?” shadings there serve a higher purpose and break down the film’s relative merits with more graphic subtlety (77 Metacritic, 100 on “fresh or rotten/thumbs up or down” Rottentomatoes).

My grade for the film, which I saw as hit or miss, with too little “craziness,” too much conspicuous consumption played for (weak) laughs, somewhat fey male leads who frankly had more chemistry with each other than with their lady friends, works out to 68 — 2.5 stars out of four. The director, Jon M.Chu, did “Step Up 3D” and “GI Joe: Retaliation” and “Jem and the Holograms.” Don’t try to sell me on him being the next Ang Lee, Paul Feig, Kevin Feige, Spike Lee or Mike Newell. He isn’t.

But look at the surnames of the other Metacritic-aggregated critics who are, with their inflated scores –100 for a few — bending the rating skyward on “Crazy Rich Asians.” “Yu, Kang, Ng, Chang.” See a pattern there? Shocking! Take away their swooning and it’s a more measured 70, 73 on the Metacritic scale.

Some weeks back, San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Film and Television, in the person of employee Martha Lauzen, crunched Rotten Tomatoes ratings for “female directed/female centric” films and concluded that male movie critics are “harder” on such films than female ones, implying sexism on their/our part.

This had to have been inspired by the beating “Ocean’s 8” endured, prompting Mindy Kaling to get in a huff, as it was not unlike the smackdown of the distaff remake of “Ghostbusters.”

Lauzen wasn’t wrong with her numbers, but she blundered into a perfectly incorrect — if headline-grabbing (The New York Times reprinted the press release) — conclusion. As I argued in that last link, it’s not that male critics are necessarily under-rating such films, it’s that critics of the gender matching that of the filmmakers and/or topline stars are in this case grading these films on the curve. Female critics are identifying with whatever (of whatever quality) is up on the screen more than male critics and in the process, cutting these movies slack.

That’s human nature, and we’ve seen it in movies and criticism going back forever. African American critics may have embraced earlier and bailed out on Spike Lee, John Singleton or Tyler Perry later than white ones (not always) because of a connection with the stories they were telling and the ways they told those stories. The formulaic and slow-footed “Creed” and “Black Panther” had skewed critical perceptions because of their representation. OK movies, but 4 stars out of 4? Seriously?

“Crazy Rich Asians” promises to be a phenomenon, a “Big Fat Greek Wedding” sized hit, if not “Wonder Woman” or “Black Panther” sized. It’s Americanized and Westernized in the extreme, but defiantly, amusingly Chinese, more of a hybrid adaptation of  age-old romantic comedy tropes than a true “culture clash” comedy (Again, see “The Wedding Banquet” for that).

I would expect critics of Asian origin to embrace the representations, the broad spectrum of comic “types” the screenplay, based on Kevin Kwan’s novel, presents. If racial identity was any part of their cultural upbringing, of course they’re going to get more out of it than me or other critics not from any Asian culture. I think they’re giving the movie a bit of a break (4 stars out of 4? Seriously?). But so what? In these cases, there should be an overriding sense of “there’s nothing wrong with that” bias.

Me? Have I ever panned a picture featuring a sailboat (“All is Lost,” “Adrift”)? Panned, well, maybe, but certainly not trashed. Bias. Everybody has it. We’re all different, with different biases. Get used to it, take it into account.

So before some Center for Study of Asians in the Film and Television decides that “white critics are harder on Asian films” is a thesis they’d love to prove, see the film, take some notes. Count the times you actually laugh and maybe figure out if those laughs are of the Chinese “inside baseball” variety. There’s a bias in the reviews, a perfectly acceptable or at least understandable one in all these cases. Try not to miss the obvious or make more of it than you should.

“Crazy Rich Asians” opens Wednesday.

They’re called “Breastaurants” for a reason.

Twin Peaks, Twisted Kilt and the easily imitated Hooters — with their all-female, legs and push-up bras wait staffs and leering, almost all male clientele — are pre-#MeToo, sexist and retrograde. But the “man cave” trend in franchised sports bars isn’t going away.

Especially in places like Texas. And they’re not just surviving because of customer demand, but because there’s an ever-willing parade of nubile young ladies willing to wear the tight, bare midriff tops and whatever leg-baring bottoms the “theme” demands, for the tips and whatever else they get out of all the ogling.

“Support the Girls” looks at this world from inside the man cave, a funny, occasionally biting comedy that will make any veteran of the drudgery of chain restaurant work  wince at the flashbacks even if they recoil from the sexism.

Writer-director Andrew Bujalski (the personal trainer comedy “Results”) builds his “Waiting…”/”Coyote Ugly” mashup around Regina Hall, as the shaky but ever-supportive manager of such a pub, “Double Whammies,” in suburban Texas.

No experience, but need a job and can fill out the uniform (but not too much)? See Lisa. Child-care issues? She’ll talk another waitress into watching your kid. Drowning in debt and need a boost to start over? Let’s have a parking lot car wash fundraiser and not tell the boss.

Coping with the “drama” of her girls, the “performance” nature of the work (which allows companies to discriminate based on appearance), the racist informal policy that dictates that no more than one Black or Hispanic waitress can be on the same shift would be enough to make anybody cry in the car in the parking lot.

Lisa’s got her own problems, but often they take a back seat to her work “family,” especially over the one long day depicted in “Girls.” “Support” isn’t just a pun. She’s got to hire, via cattle call, promising prospects. Once they’ve started, she’s got to protect her girls from boorish customers and from themselves.

She has “zero tolerance” for crude remarks in what she insists is a “family place.” “If these guys wanted to go to a strip club, they know where they can find one.”

But she has to bird-dog the waitresses, who are old enough and pretty enough to have figured out what men want and how they can get big tips out of them by bending the rules, tugging at the uniform and flirting-over-the-limit.

Lisa might grimace when her best waitress, Maci (Haley Lu Richardson of “Edge of Seventeen”) trains newbies by drawling, “Notice how I open my mouth real wide when I laugh?”

She might be taken aback to discover a would-be burglar trapped in her duct work at the start of the day, and that the bum is pals with one of her cooks, who set this up. But the cook isn’t ratted out to the cops. She lets him finish his shift and is even promised a reference. “Compassion” is her middle name.

Over this long grind of a day, we follow Lisa through crises both professional (the burglar knocked their cable out) and personal. Her marriage is in trouble, her girls drive her crazy, her customers (ground-breaking gay comic Lea DeLaria plays a truck-driving “regular” who sticks up for the girls, for different reasons) piss her off and her boss, the owner, is as clueless as bosses in such movies almost always are.

James LeGros is Cubby, a micro-managing jerk of an owner who doesn’t know of or approve of a lot of what Lisa does, but that’s how these places function. Every “corporate” rule Cubby cooks up (it’s a one-off joint he’d like to franchise, like the “Man Cave” chain that’s their competition) is just something else Lisa and her girls have to work around.

“You wanna fire me? There’s paperwork to fill out and I can show you how!”

Hall (“Girls Trip”) makes an earthy anchor for Bujalski’s scruffy, misshapen movie, keeping it on track while she’s on the screen. She lets us read between Lisa’s every line to her charges. “I totally trust your judgment” means “You need to judge again.” When he loses her for a chunk of the third act, “Support the Girls” goes off the rails.

Shayna McHayle and Richardson are the stand-outs from the wait staff, LeGros is well-cast as the rather-be-fishing boor always throwing his “I’m your employer” authority around.

The milieu is rich and colorful and working-class savvy, surprising considering Bujalski’s Harvard pedigree. The movie feels lived in, greasy and real. He just needed more funny lines and help figuring out the most promising thread among the many he introduces to pursue.

A young boy being raised by a working waitress mom in a climate where any biker, soldier, cop or welder can harass mom is one long teachable moment.

“You know his mama didn’t raise him right” isn’t just a put-down of somebody Lisa has to kick out of the joint. It’s the plot-line that could have given “Support the Girls” sharper focus that might have made it consequential.

MPAA Rating: R for language including sexual references, and brief nudity

Cast: Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, Shayna McHayle, Dylan Gelula, Zoe Graham, James LeGross

Credits: Written and directed by Andrew Bujalski . A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:30

She speaks up, because it’s not her first meeting.

“I’m Ellie, and I’m an addict.” 

Pills, she says,  “took the life out of life, which is exactly what I wanted.” She chased away her husband but somehow held onto her kids. Now she’s starting over in Chicago, renting a stately Queen Anne house for them in “a sketchy neighborhood.” Maybe this time will be different. She surrenders the floor.

Christopher takes a turn, brooding, sympathetic, “Do I stand up like they do in the movies?” It’s his “first meeting.” He says.

“I’ve just torn through…so many people.”

You bet your beetle brow he has. We’ve seen the aftermath of his mayhem in an opening scene of “Family Blood,” a cheerleader stalked through a ruined house, bodies stuffed in a closet.

Her crucifix? “It doesn’t work. RUN.” But he is at every doorway as she tries to flee.

“Family Blood” is a gloomy but dull vampire tale set against the backdrop of 12 step programs. “It’s like any other addiction…manageable,” Christopher (James Ransone) reassures Ellie (Vinessa Shaw), after killing her fellow addict and enabler, and then “turning” her.

“It doesn’t get easier.” She may be a VILF, now. But Ellie knows.

That’s a promising premise, one touched on in countless vampire “romances.” Here, they actually go to meetings (not that their fellow addicts realize it). It’s just a high concept abandoned, or forgotten, in the slow clumsy thriller to follow.

“Blood” has hints of Every Kids’ Nightmare, with an addict for a parent whose even-weirder behavior doesn’t look weird enough to suspect that her AA meeting “friend” Christopher loves Halloween.

But when he knocks at the door, her son Kyle (Colin Ford) is leery. He’s seen the movies, practiced drawing demons. Should he invite him in?

“Doesn’t work” is Christopher’s favorite line. “I was just being polite.”

It begins promisingly enough, with Ellie taking it “one day at a time” and Kyle instantly acting-out in his new school. The fire alarm goes off, her teacher orders Ellie’s younger daughter ( Eloise Lushina) to evacuate.

“It’s just my stupid brother.”

A brooding rebel is catnip to Meegan (Ajiona Alexus). But the boy has bigger problems. And he thinks Mom’s drug addiction is the worst of them.

Co-writer/director Sonny Mallhi (“The Roommate”) doesn’t manage any suspense here, giving away the whole blood-sucker thing in the opening, then failing to make Ellie’s peril something she senses, or is lured into ignoring. No seduction, befriending, what have you. The vampire is just in her business and that’s that.

The pacing is, like the music, funereal.  The vampire tropes — rare meat, tempting paper cuts, “C’mere, putty cat,” etc. — blasé, tired.

The kids are here for pathos, but that doesn’t pan out either. How they ended up in the custody of a not-really-recovering addict should make them both bitter, looking to get out. No matter how fancy the house. An “unreachable” Dad is a blown opportunity.

At least B-movie horror mainstay Ransone takes a stab (thanks to the script) at being funny. The litany of “Doesn’t work” vampire preventions get a laugh.

Aside from that, all we get out of this is a lot of pretty people spattered in fake blood.

MPAA Rating: TV:MA

Cast: Vinessa Shaw, James Ransone, Colin Ford, Eloise Lushina, Ajiona Alexus

Credits: Directed by Sonny Mallhi, script by Nick Savvides, Sonny Mallhi. A Blumhouse/Netflix release.

Running time: 1:32