Blood Relatives is a vampire comedy available now on Shudder. You’d think I’d say horror comedy since, you know, vampires and Shudder, but there’s nothing even approaching an attempt at horror in this flick. And that’s intentional and perfectly fine with me.

No, this is a family comedy about a vampire who tools about the US, staying mobile and hidden from the sun. One day (night?) he finds out he fathered a daughter fifteen years ago and she’s come looking for him. Can a care-free, leather jacketed Jewish vampire and a sarcastic teen girl who eats raw meat come together as a family?

I giggled and snorted a surprising amount of times in this good natured vamp comedy. Not consistently enough, but sometimes surprisingly loudly. I also enjoyed the film’s passing references to the vamp’s tragic past… you know, back around WWII where he lost his family in the camps. Yeah, it’s got a light touch on heavier topics before moving back to a generation gap with fangs comedy.

The two leads were a lot of fun together. Noah Segan plays the dad vamp and he’s got a real casual tone that occasionally slips into some real Charlie Day energy. Victory Moroles (who I enjoyed in Plan B) is a lot of fun too playing the daughter to this out-of-touch dad.

I also dug the American southwest locations. It reminded me of Near Dark, only funny (and with a lower body count). I like to think they had that early vampire flick in mind when writing these jokes.

This isn’t a revelatory, world-changing film… but it’s a pretty decent fun time playing on vampire mythology and, you know, being a new dad to a cranky teenager. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Score: 83