Vampires vs. the Bronx is a 2020 Horror Comedy aired on Netflix.
In the Bronx, New York City, Miguel "Lil Mayor" Martinez is a young Dominican-American teen trying to raise money to save his neighborhood's local bodega, though his neighbors view his effort as futile due to the borough's rapid gentrification. But a chance encounter causes Miguel to stumble on a sinister truth: the people responsible for all the recent buyouts are bloodthirsty vampires. With "save the neighborhood" taking a desperate new tone, Miguel recruits his friends Bobby Carter, who's getting a little too friendly with the local gang, and Luis Acosta, the high-strung nerd and expert on all things horror, to bring the fight to these monstrous menaces.
The trailer can be viewed here
.
Vampires vs. the Bronx contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Most of the adults don't listen to the kids' frightened pleas about vampires, and even after Miguel's mom comes around, she'd rather move out of town than join the fight. The most helpful of them, Tony, gets killed by the Commander the night he learns the truth. Ultimately though, all the adults come to the kids' rescue at the climax.
- Asshole Victim: Henny and his gang all get eaten by the vampires over the course of the film.
- Badass Preacher: Of course he is, he's Method Man! Whenever Father Jackson shows up, Luis quakes in his shoes over his absence from church, and at the final battle he comes armed with a processional cross, dealing a burning blow to the lead vampire.
- Batter Up!: Tony's bodega displays an authentic Sammy Sosa baseball bat. During a vampire attack it gets broken, but this gives it a sharp edge that makes it an effective anti-vampire stake.
- Big Bad: The vampires answer to their leader the Commander, who turns out to be the seemingly friendly but actually vicious Vivian.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Vivian is a sweetheart who loves the Bronx and its culture. Turns out she's the oldest and most evil vampire of all who wants the neighborhood to feed with impunity.
- Black and Nerdy: All of the heroes, being fans of Blade, but Luis takes the cake as the nerdiest of them all, being nervous and bespectacled and a reader of Stephen King.
- The Cavalry: When Miguel and Bobby are cornered by Vivian, Rita arrives with the whole neighborhood, armed with anything they could muster up to fight off vampires.
- Chekhov's Gun: Tony brings up the bat his father gave him which belonged to Sammy Sosa himself as his most prized possession, so you know it's relevant. True enough, it's used to slay the Big Bad.
- Christianity is Catholic: Given the predominantly Hispanic setting and the presence of Vampires (themselves tied to Catholic conventions like the Eucharist and holy water), the film's take on Christianity is primarily Catholic. A Catholic priest, Father Jackson, is a important supporting character and most characters seem to be at least raised Catholic.
- Dead Star Walking: Blockbuster star Zoe Saldaña shows up in the first 3 minutes, and bites it during then. Or rather, gets bitten.
- Defiant to the End: When Tony is paralyzed by Vivian's gaze, his final words are to tell her she'll never get the boys.
- The Dog Bites Back: Vivian's mistreatment of Frank results in him sparing the boys which leads to the vampires' ultimate undoing.
- Evil, Inc.: The Murnau Corporation is behind much of the block's recent buyouts, and it turns out to be a front for hungry vampires. Their logo is even Vlad the Impaler.
- Gangbangers: Henny's gang causes trouble around town, and when Bobby seems to be suspiciously acquainted with them, those close to him worry he's going to end up dying in a gang like his father. Ultimately Bobby balks before his first mission when he learns he'll be sent to hunt down his own friends, and ditches them for good.
- Genre Savvy:
- Luis is the group's resident vampire expert, and Miguel turns to him to tell them everything he knows about vampires' strengths and weakness before preparing to take them down. He's also the first of the kids to realize and point out that Vivian shouldn't be trusted.
- Rita turns out to be well-acquainted with the traits of vampires, much to the boys' surprise.
Rita: We're Haitian, man. My grandma's been preparing me for this my entire life. - Holy Burns Evil: Miguel and Luis take advantage of evening mass to raid the church's wares of holy water, communion bread, and crucifixes, which prove to be potent weapons against the vampires.
- Hypnotic Eyes: When the vampires get close to a victim they can activate their hypnotic gaze to stun them when closing in for the kill.
- Improbable Weapon User: At the climactic battle with the vampire commander, one of the neighborhood kids chucks a Timb.
- Mature Work, Child Protagonists: The film is a Horror Comedy about a bunch of kids trying to save the Bronx from becoming the feeding grounds of a bunch of vampires. There's plenty of gore and death in it.
- Missing Reflection: This turns out to be the reason why the vampires don't show up on camera, causing the heroes' attempt to film the vampires for police evidence to fall flat.
- Must Be Invited: A key weakness of the vampires is that they must be invited into a residence to enter it. This doesn't necessarily have to come from who lives in the building, but can be from who owns it. When the Commander is forbidden by Miguel from entering his apartment, she has Frank buy the building from the landlord, therefore inviting her in.
- The Namesake: For most of the movie, the Vampires are fighting Bronx but more specifically three kids. In the climax, what appears to be the greater majority of the Bronx community arrives to fight them in dramatic fashion, thus, Vampires vs the Bronx.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Actually they adhere to nearly all of the classic tropes: vulnerable to sunlight, weakness to stakes, holy water, Eucharist, Must Be Invited, etc.. There are some relatively newer takes though, like the concept that they can only create new Vampires using the ashes of their progenitor vampire or the Vampire's lack of reflection going to recordings as well, meaning they don't show up on film.
- Pivotal Wake-up: After getting gunned down by Henny's gang, the four vampire foot soldiers rise up from laying on the pavement this way and proceed to slaughter them.
- Police Are Useless: The officers are in the pocket of the sinister Murnau Corporation, and on top of that the vampires don't appear on video footage, so nothing Miguel films works as evidence. The vampires are counting on this trope, saying they explicitly chose to set up residence in the Bronx because the authorities won't bat an eye if people go missing there.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: The vampires are old school European types and they are incredibly racist, with one referring to the Bronx's multiracial inhabitants as "vermin."
- Poor Communication Kills: A villainous variant. Apparently Frank never told the vampires that he hired Henny's gang, nor told the gang to leave the Murnau people alone, resulting in them getting into a fight and the gang getting eaten.
- Redemption Equals Death: When the kids are held up by Frank, he ultimately lets them go, but the vampires see his act of compassion and devour him.
- Red Herring: When Frank meets with the boys at the Murnau office, the windows deploy heavy-duty shades. This turns out to have been unnecessary for Frank himself, as he's not a vampire yet.
- Sacrificial Lion: At the bodega Tony the owner dies when cornered in his shop by Vivian after he finally realizes she's a vampire. His death is what makes things personal for Miguel.
- Shout-Out:
- Frank Polidori's surname is evidently taken from John William Polidori, author of The Vampyre.
- The vampires' evil company is called the Murnau Corporation, a reference to the director of Nosferatu. Later in the movie when the Vampires are shot down, they also get back up doing the "Nosferatu rise".
- The kids educate themselves for vampire fighting by watching Blade.
- Slim nicknames Luis "Puerto Rican Harry Potter" and Alexis "Hamilton" (because of his whistling.)
- Luis is seen reading 'Salem's Lot.
- The Vampire's deformed Game Face clearly takes after The Lost Boys, as is some of the cinematography showing them.
- Throughout the movie, Luis is seen various metal band shirts, including Ghost and Slayer.
- Sinister Whistling: Alexis the vampire is quite fond of whistling when approaching his would-be victims.
- Smooch of Victory: Miguel pines over local girl Rita throughout the whole film. When the vampires are defeated, he moves in for a kiss, but she turns him down, not knowing him all that well as well as being older than him.
- Spotting the Thread: Miguel realizes there's something odd about Vivian when he sees her anxiously stepping near, but never over, his apartment's threshold, cluing him in that she's a vampire who can't enter without being invited in.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Luis totes around a bottle of Tropicana orange juice, to help with his low blood sugar.
- Vampire Vannabe: Luis figures out that Frank isn't affected by sunlight because he's not a vampire yet, but is working with them in exchange for becoming one later. Bobby, seeing a parallel with himself trying to get in favor with Henny's gang, convinces Frank that it's not worth trying for and that the vampires will make him "their bitch".
- Villainous Gentrification: The whole movie is centered around a gentrification metaphor, with the villainous vampires both literally and figuratively sucking the life out of the neighborhood. Their modus operandi is to buy up cheap places for big, kill the former owners as soon as the deal's done, then put in new ritzy establishments that are all just fronts for their vampire nests.
