Horst in Translation ([email protected])
"Die Vampirschwestern" or "Vampire Sisters" is a German movie from 2012 that runs slightly under 100 minutes. It has its 5th anniversary this year and they made 2 sequels since then, the most recent one came out last year. The director is Wolfgang Groos and he has worked on many kids films in recent years. The script comes from Ursula Gruber, who has not done so, but as she really only adapted the novel by Franziska Gehm, it may have been a challenge that wasn't too difficult. And I do think Gruber succeeded nicely. The cast, as always with German kids films, features unknown child actors, but the grown-ups are played by familiar faces such as Christiane Paul, Stipe Erceg, Michael Kessler and Richy Müller, who was wasted a bit here though. It is the story of two teenage girls who are half-human, half-vampire, so they quickly get sunburn, but they don't sleep in coffins or so. I liked many of the vampire references in here and that goes way beyond the ones used by Kessler's character to fight the vampires. He is the main antagonist in here, but he is not scary at all. They wrote him more like a grumpy neighbor and Kessler does not have to show great range to make the character work, which is why it works out nicely. He may be the villain, but he is just in it for the fun and it's more about goofy incompetence and clumsiness when it comes to his character and not about really serious revenge.This is never a drama movie. It's a touch of family film with coming-of-age elements in terms of accepting who you are and it is naturally all about the comedy. The make-up and costumes are fine and the story gets away with a whole lot more than it usually would thanks to the fantasy element. I laughed on quite a few occasions while watching this one and it is definitely one of the best German children films from the last five years. This is already quite an honor because there have been certainly quite a few. A pretty creative result overall. The two young lead actresses were convincing as well. now I just hope it stayed this well in the follow-up movies and maybe at three installments, the series isn't even over already. Who knows if there may even be a forth or fifth movie at some point depending on how many more books Gehm is going to write. I will certainly watch films 2 and 3 at some point and I truly hope they don't get worse as this one we have here was definitely a positive surprise and I recommend checking it out.
