Rating: R | Runtime: 115 minutes
Release Date: October 4th, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Lionsgate
Director(s): Euros Lyn
Writer(s): Talitha Stevenson / Matt Haig (novel)

Your mother and I made a choice.

It’s a vampire film, but also a junkie film. That’s what happens when you decide to bring the supernatural into reality in ways that make it less so. Because while a full-blown vampire can wield mind control and super strength during an infinite life span in Euros Lyn’s The Radleys (adapted by Talitha Stevenson from Matt Haig’s book), they’re pretty much just drug addicts acting on adrenaline and craving. The allure of this lifestyle is thus dulled (after the initial rush of discovery) to make sense of why Helen (Kelly Macdonald) and Peter Radley (Damian Lewis) chose to abstain. Unfortunately, sobriety is a constant struggle.

The world building is therefore compelling—especially once the Radleys’ children (Bo Bragason’s Clara and Harry Baxendale’s Rowan) discover what they are. It’s understandable to want to choose abstinence after surviving the reckless lifestyle of a vampire for decades, but these teens have no historical basis with which to comply. You can’t suddenly expect them to feel this unlimited sense of power and agree to simply give it away. They must come to that decision themselves, even if it means leaving a few bodies in their wake. Because, just like with drug addiction, you often can’t come out the other side without first hitting rock bottom.

That’s where Peter’s twin brother Will (also Lewis) comes in. He’s the complete opposite of the mild-mannered doctor quietly living a suburban life in plain sight. Will loves being a vampire. He loves treating humans like expendable blood bags to be left draining on the side of the road. He drives his RV across Europe without a care in the world, messing with people’s minds and lives depending on what suits his current desires. Peter and Helen could never tell their kids about him because his carefree lack of morality would look like fun and destroy everything they’ve built. But they need him now. They need the powers they refuse to use and can only hope Clara and Rowan see past his façade of cool.

You’d therefore assume The Radleys will be a simple good vs. evil choice between abstinence and addiction. In some respects, it is. Except it’s also about unrequited love (or the perception of it). And that’s where things start to fall apart considering we’ve barely been able to wrap our heads around the mythology at play (let alone the addition of a former cop in Shaun Parkes who’s kind of on their trail despite not really being on it considering his motives are personal in nature) before the focus shifts to Rowan’s loner trying to juggle his feelings for Evan (Jay Lycurgo) and his craving for blood. Yes, these threads go hand-in-hand, but not quite as smoothly as you’d hope.

What I mean is that Rowan’s journey is precisely what his parents went through years prior. While that mirror is a great way into the mythology, however, we don’t start there. First, we follow Clara as though she’s the main character going through her own self-discovery from the perspective of toxic masculinity and rape (another parallel to their parents’ as yet mysterious origins that’s brushed aside way too cavalierly). We therefore invest in her only to have her disappear for the second half of the film when Rowan takes over. Lyn and Stevenson understand the need for both as connective tissue to Helen, Peter, and Will, but they can’t quite get everything to mesh so it doesn’t all feel bloated, slow, and meandering.

Once you come out the other side and look back, though, it will make sense. I found myself more interested in the idea of vampirism as drug addiction than any of the human drama (due to the latter coming in fits and spurts when the plot demands it), but you can’t have one without the other. I guess I just wish it could have all been woven together better so it didn’t feel like I was watching two films with very specific starts and ends. Let Clara and Rowan’s discoveries unravel in tandem rather than succession so we don’t feel as though both are secondary to Mom and Dad despite Rowan ultimately taking control.

It plays like a much longer enterprise awkwardly cut down in a way that retains too much information without allowing for the payoffs necessary to care about each narrative thread. Characters come and go to be rendered as pawns to a plot that doesn’t truly begin until about halfway through and it proves difficult to invest when we don’t know how long their involvement will actually last. The beats are there—they just keep getting hit in precise order without the nuance necessary for organic emotional attachment. That clinical nature ensures it works, but only superficially so in the moment. I’ll probably never think about any of it again.

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[L-R] Damian Lewis and Kelly Macdonald in THE RADLEYS; courtesy of Lionsgate.