I, for one, have appreciated the supernatural eruption that we have seen in the entertainment industry lately, especially pertaining to vampires. Yet “Shadowland,” writ-ten and directed by Wyatt Weed, does not stand up to the standards set by its peers.

The filming was excellent. I liked the idea of a vampire waking up 100 or so years later not remembering anything and being hunted by a vampire slayer sent by the church. That fact that the vampire Laura can not remember anything about her past is flat-out told to the audience by a restau-rant owner who meets her for the first time and coincidentally happens to guess she has amne-sia. Yet throughout the film, the audience sees snapshots of Laura’s past before she was buried alive. So the audience usually forgets the amnesia idea until the end, when she is supposed to have her great awakening.

When we see a pastor driving a stake into Laura’s heart with a hammer and watch fake blood spew from her mouth, it seems easy to guess how the movie will play out. But in those assumptions, we would be wrong; I, for one, was surprised by the ending, nor were my questions about Laura answered. If there was some higher message, I don’t think I grasped it.

On a positive note, the costum-ing was well crafted (except for one particularly finely-dressed bum). But the story both told too much at the beginning and not enough at the end. Combine that with the amateur acting, the unpredictable, yet close-to-cheesy script and the awkward plot warranted two out of five stars, if we’re being generous. See it if you want some easy watching; just don’t take any of it too seriously.