There has been a resurgence of the Vampire as a monster in recent years. Far too often vampires are portrayed as ‘cursed with awesome’, down to superpowers and immortality. But the life of a bloodsucker is one of eternal night, hunger, and pain: abandoning or lamenting a lost humanity one can only parody. This series manages to effectively portray this gulf with opposing camps, each pursuing their own agenda tied to the legacy of an ancestral manor called Chapelwaite. This series is an amalgam of Stephen King stories set in Jerusalem’s lot (I strongly suspect there will be an eventual tie-in to the recently announced Salem's lot remake), but with barely any actual reflection of the stories themselves. Regardless, this is a high production value period piece, where the recently arrived Charles Boone inherits the Chapelwaite estate and immediately falls under its dark auspices even as a darker conspiracy maneuvers to take advantage of his increasingly wavering sanity. Adrien Brody might be the perfect actor for this series, as he constantly has the air of pure moroseness, the look of a man who once had a puppy, and while the fate of the puppy is unknown, we can be assured nothing good happened to it. He carries the series with a world-weary suffering, beginning the series besieged by tragedy and which is only augmented as the series goes on. Across the board, the acting is quite good, with some standouts, although few bother to feign an era-appropriate accent. There is some surprisingly good commentary, making resonant points about prejudice and racism, social status and familial trappings and curses. Honestly, the series is quite good, and only stumbles in the last episode, where a rushed finale and some nonsensical choices bring down the entirety of the series. A personal peeve in media, is when morose characters lament ‘the only way’ and ‘only choice’ offered is one where a thinking person might immediately offer half a dozen more sensical options and outcomes. Were it not for these final moments, this series would be trumpeted as exceptionally well done, well acted, gorgeous to look at, and a triumphant return to vampiric horror along with some rather high stakes and cosmic repercussions for humanity as a whole. Despite stumbling in the finale, the series is quite highly recommended and likely worth at least one repeat watch.
Chapelwaite (2021)