I'm not sure why this old review of the Cirque Du Freak movie recently popped up on my radar again, but it was an interesting read, so I figured I'd share it here for those of you who missed it first time round, or who (like me) had forgotten about it!

https://screenrant.com/cirque-du-freak-reviews/

The review dates back to 2009, when the movie was first released, It's a very positive review, and as I've always said, despite the impression that has formed over the years that the movie was hated by reviewers when it came out, that's just not the case. I read every review that I could find at the time, I think it was somewhere between 120 and 140 -- a third WERE negative (mostly written by reviewers who saw the movie as a Twlight cash-in, unaware that it had been on the cards long before Twilight came along), but a third gave it a mixed review -- there were some things the reviewers liked, some things they didn't -- and a third were extremely positive, like this one.

As positive as the review is, the reviewer DOES make a very telling comment near the end -- "The Vampire's Assistant is a hard movie to nail down as far as tone." I think this is what really worked against it, and led to it faring so poorly at the Box Office. (And it WAS a Box Office failure, there's no denying that, which is why there was never a sequel.) The movie heavily diluted the darkness of the books, and played as much as a comedy as it did as a horror flick. It was a tricky one to market, because it was too funny to be really scary, yet too dark to be a full-on laugh-fest.

If you haven't yet seen the film, you can watch it for free in the USA if you have an Amazon Prime account, and on Netflix in the UK and Ireland. You can stream or buy/rent it in many other countries too -- do a search for it on JustWatch to find out how to access it in YOUR country: https://www.justwatch.com/