Stake Land

 The first vampire we see in Stake Land is eating a baby, squeezing the juice out of it like a grapefruit. Fucking hell, Stake Land...

 The vampire in question has just wiped out teenager Martin's (Connor Paolo) whole family, including his baby brother/sister. As he flees the farmhouse, he runs into Mister (Nick Damici) who arms him and takes him back so he can at least get some revenge.

 Vampires openly own the night -  an I Am Legend situation, except that here they're completely feral. It's a nice change from the standard zombie apocalypse; They're mostly an individualistic threat, but much, much deadlier. Mister has become a wandering vampire hunter, which makes him a sort of rock star amongst the enclaves of survivors that dot the countryside. He takes Martin under his wing and gives him some training as they make their way northwards towards New Eden, a supposedly vampire-free zone.

 Unfortunately, to get there they need to go through lands controlled by a coalition of religious nuts who believe vampires are a part of God's plan. These guys are fucking despicable; They're introduced trying to rape a woman, and we're told they like ramming trucks full of vampires into other peoples' settlements. We get to see a particularly horrifying variation of that first-hand when they crash a party later. Assholes.

 Mister and Martin pick up some other travellers as they tread the line between undead and fundamentalist: A nun (Kelly McGillis), a pregnant girl (Danielle Harris), an ex-navy SEAL (Sean Nelson).

 Like so many post-apocalyptic stories, this is a road trip. Unlike many other such stories, things haven't completely gone to shit; there's a few human settlements not populated by assholes, and despite things being very, very bleak, glimmers of humanity and hope manages to show through here and there, and a whole lot of natural beauty (DP Ryan Samul does a great job capturing it).

 The film's surfaces are so well realised that the relatively low budget doesn't register much - besides the great cinematography and set design the soundtrack, by Jeff Grace, is gorgeous.

 It's grim and ruthlessly cruel, but also surprisingly lyrical; The film felt fairly unique in a crowded field when it first came out in 2010, and it still holds some power now, even after years of The Walking Dead and multiple incarnations of The Last of Us (a game I'm sure was more than a little bit influenced by this). A lot of it is down to the complex, likeable characters and the actors who portray them - D'amici in particular is superb: badass, cynical and pragmatic, but not far gone enough to fail to recognize he may have shed too much of his humanity.

The nature of the vampires and their invasion is kept mysterious, but we get a good sense of the scope of things - mostly thanks to the SEAL's war stories; Likewise, Mister's hunting tips let us know there's various types of vampires out there, some of whom are harder to kill than others.

 There's some slightly corny narration courtesy of Martin, but otherwise the script (by director Jim Mickle and protagonist Nick Damici) maintains a light touch, letting the characters drive the action with a minimum of exposition. There's a tiny bit of action, but the film's actually better in its quiet moments; It's got a good bunch of people to share the road with.