Anthony's Film Review - From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)

This movie could be entertaining if it were to actually hold itself together...

The main problem I have with From Dusk Till Dawn is the genre. It is true that many movies fit into more than one genre at a time. In such cases, though, I have no problem with it because the conventions of each genre play out throughout the whole movie. Once in a while, you have a movie that is of more than one genre, but the movie focuses on one genre at a time. Whether this movie works depends on whether the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Let's talk about From Dusk Till Dawn. I saw this movie without knowing firsthand what it's about. I figured it had action since the poster showed George Clooney and Quentin Tarantino with guns. As the movie began, I found myself having enough interest in it. Apparently, these two actors are playing criminals of some sort. I could describe what the plot is in this part of the movie, but I won't just because it's nothing special.

What happens later in the movie involves various characters who arrive at a strip club in the middle of a desert. There's an interesting scene where Cheech Marin is in front of the club telling everyone what kind of women could be found inside (plus a couple of weird things just for laughs). For you guys in the audience, you'll definitely enjoy the hot women inside this place. One of the characters in this movie, believe it or not, is a young boy, and he's quite lucky to be here. The title of this movie, by the way, refers to the fact that this club opens from dusk till dawn.

Now, onto the highlight of the movie, and it's a weird one. The club is actually inhabited by vampires. That's right. Vampires. With pretty much nothing to explain their origin, these creatures come out of nowhere in the club and start wreaking havoc on the humans. The rest of the movie is a hack-and-slash gore fest that completely ignores who the main characters had been when they first appeared. I will admit that it was fun to watch this part of the movie, but I imagined it like a stand-alone horror movie, not a horror movie within a non-horror movie.

As strange as my description of this movie is, this is how I accurately remember it. It's two different movies, a crime flick and a horror flick, that don't even connect in a meaningful way. Who actually thought these two genres could work together and better than each one separately? What would've been a better movie is if the vampires had something to do with crime at the beginning of the movie. Even then, it feels weird. Just because you can mix any set of ingredients doesn't mean the final dish will necessarily be a tasty one.

Anthony's Rating:

For more information about From Dusk Till Dawn, visit the Internet Movie Database.