Living Among Us

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If alternative life had a distinctively different metabolism, say, it might have altered rocks or created mineral deposits in a way that cannot be explained by the activities of known organisms. The film opens with a news story montage, telling us about a documentary filmmaker, Mike ( Thomas Ian Nicholas), who has outed vampires, once hidden, that are blending in with regular humanity. It is conceivable, though, that an exotic alternative form of life could exist under more extreme conditions of dryness or temperature. No planet is more Earth-like than Earth itself, so if life does emerge readily under terrestrial conditions, then perhaps it formed many times on our home planet. At first this idea might seem preposterous; if alien organisms thrived right under our noses (or even in our noses), would not scientists have discovered them already?

The orthodox view of biogenesis holds that if life on Earth originated more than once, one form would have swiftly predominated and eliminated all the others. Realizing that she is turning undead anyway, Carrie sacrifices herself by running off alone to create a distraction for Mike and Benny. The cast included in Living Among Us are Esmé Bianco, William Sadler, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Andrew Keegan, John Heard, and Jordan Hinson. It’s Summer, and I’m taking a bus to St Mary’s Lighthouse on the Northumberland coast to meet my friend Adam, to chat, mess about and, most importantly, watch wildlife. They live in beautiful Western Australia with their teenagers, Sophia and Thomas and their dogs, Benji and Queen.Rebellious and narcissistic, Blake recounts how Andrew made him a vengeful vampire following his troubled youth. The sequence of triplets in a gene dictates the sequence of amino acids that must be strung together to build a particular protein. Now a group of documentarians have been granted access to learn how they live and coexist with humans. Angry, that with all of the talent out there, this is one of the projects dubbed good enough to invest money and time on.

A week later, and I’m in Rainton Meadows Nature Reserve with Durham Wildlife Trust’s Young Rangers to collect some wildflower seeds to sow. Mike, Benny, and Carrie arrive at a house and meet vampire Andrew Pritchard, his wife Elleanor Grey, and their “sons” Blake and Selvin. Known organisms share a similar biochemistry and use an almost identical genetic code, which is why biologists can sequence their genes and position them on a single tree. Biologists have proposed that primitive life emerged from a community of cells that traded material and information and that cellular autonomy and species individuation came later.

The actions of Blake – who shows them the dark (homicidal) side of vampirism – seem out with the vampires’ goals but the vampires who want to show a sympathetic face actually show the crew a murderous ritual involving a human (they claim a disease-ridden prostitute who infects men purposefully, Blake later says just some random kidnapped women). Find out what they each had in common and how destiny brought them together to form the very unique family they are today. Everything is delightfully stilted and awkward so as to very clearly telegraph to the audience that somethin’ ain’t right. Blake was a hoot, Elleanor icily aloof, Samuel thoroughly political and the fact that the actors were experienced hands helped a hell of a lot. After vampires make themselves public, a group of documentarians are granted access to learn how they live and coexist with humans.

This is not just true in horror terms: another prejudice Metcalf subverts with gentle eloquence is our expectations of the female characters. Benny notices a royal painting of Elleanor, indicating that she may actually be an ancient vampire elder. Mercifully, Metcalf doesn’t stretch this section out; but he also offers no surprises between now and the credits. The world has already come to understand that vampires are everywhere — it’s a virus, not magic, no biggie — and now the bloodsuckers are in their public-relations phase.

Metcalf scoots us right past it, focusing on a younger bloodsucker in the household, the supremely bro-ish Blake (Andrew Keegan), who can’t help but show off for the camera. The horror comedy Living Among Us is a fun, fresh take on the vampire sub genre that successfully delivers both solid comedy and satisfying gore. Through an arrangement with Samuel, KMNBR TV station manager Aaron Stafford assigns his eager brother-in-law Benny to team with accomplished documentarian Mike and Mike’s girlfriend Carrie for a vampire family interview. This extermination might have happened, for example, if one form quickly appropriated all the available resources or “ganged up” on a weaker form of life by swapping successful genes exclusively with its own kind.

A group of documentary filmmakers have been invited to spend time with them and learn how they live. Those were intermingled with not-the-best CG of things like vampire super speed and the kind of acting you’d find in a lower budget movie.This observation suggests the existence of a more rudimentary precursor, such as a doublet code employing only 10, rather than 20, amino acids.