"I want your music and I want your stories," says the white vampire, the blood-sucker, offering wealth and eternal life in exchange for the blues. But the Vampire/Irishman was an immigrant too, once, with his own music which also comes from somewhere else - most likely church. There’s analogy on top of allegory on top of parable here, and I’m afraid I’m not enlightened enough to figure it all out. But this mash-up of the cotton fields post-slavery, the immigrant experience, the juke joint jazz, and vampire lore makes for an entertaining and thought-provoking jazz stew. The vampire lore, especially the bit about requiring to be “invited in”, factors heavily in the plot. Filmmakers rely on the conventions of the genre to their great advantage, informing this allegory about cultural appropriation. Despite some weird, pseudo-Lynchian surrealism in the middle, which took me out of the story for a minute, this is an incisive banger, biting off more than it can chew, and trying always to slay.
