Love it or loathe it, the Cirque Du Freak movie still generates a lot of debate, even all these years later. Since I had nothing to do with the making of the movie, I'm always happy to present both sides of the argument -- as I've often said, I like the movie for what it is (while obviously wishing it had been a lot more faithful to my books), but respect the views of those who are rather less enamoured with it. In that spirit, today I'm sharing a list that appeared on CBR (Comic Books Reviews) a while back, entitled...

The 10 Worst Vampire Movies Of The 21st Century (So Far)

I must admit, I haven't seen most of these films (I stopped watched "bad" horror movies a long time ago, and these days tend to focus only on those that sound like they might be worth the time), so I don't know how they shape up in comparison to Cirque Du Freak, which comes in at #7, and whether or not they deserve to appear on such a list. What I CAN say for certain is that while the list's creators are by all means entitled to include whatever films they choose, they aren't QUITE telling the truth when they say that the Cirque Du Freak movie was "panned for poor acting, an overstuffed plot, and poor special effects."

I read every review of the film that I could find when it was released (more than 120 of them, if memory serves me correctly). Yes, about a third WERE negative (1 or 2 stars out of 5), and slammed the movie hard (although quite a few of them did so on the grounds that it was a Twilight cash-in, the reviewers apparently completely unaware that the books had preceded the Twilight books by several years, and that the film had been in pre-production long before the Twilight craze came along). But a third of the reviews were middling (3 stars) -- some bad bits to the film, they opined, but good bits too -- and a third were genuinely positive (4 or 5 stars -- admittedly not too many of the latter, but plenty of solid 4 star reviews).

There's no denying the CDF movie flopped at the box office -- that's why there were no sequels -- but the apparent critical hammering that has been assigned to it in recent years (with more current reviewers assuming that because it failed at the box office, everyone at the time must have hated it) is somewhat misplaced -- FAKE NEWS, as a wise, tolerant, deeply thoughtful ex-president would no doubt phrase it... :-)

Anyway, you can check out the full list -- and let's be honest, isn't it sometimes more fun to scan a list of "duds" than a list of "greats"?!? -- by clicking here: https://www.cbr.com/worst-vampire-movies-21st-century/