Making movies is my greatest passion. It is also the most gut wrenching and emotionally draining process anybody can put themselves through. At the end of it, the only guaranteed payoff is the feeling of satisfaction of a job done. With that in mind, I started to write FANG HUNTERS, my first vampire flick. Growing up, I drew inspiration from film makers like Ringo Lam, Brian De Palma, and Quentin Tarantino to name a few, and it is interesting to note that as far as I know, none of them have directed a vampire flick before.
I wanted to make a vampire flick because I felt that with the recent advent of TWILIGHT, TRUE BLOOD, VAMPIRE DIARIES and others, vampires on film were the fad. But I didn't want to make a traditional horror or slasher flick. My vision for FANG HUNTERS was to create an engaging drama with vampire elements. This is why I consider FANG HUNTERS a suspense drama first and a horror/ slasher second.
I wanted to counter the traditional 'vampire attacks human, human figures out a solution to fight back' formula. In fact, I reversed it completely to 'human attacks vampire, vampire has to figure out a solution'. I wanted to give our hero a reason to hunt vampires, so I created the concept that vampire fangs had value, and that they contained Ivoridium, the missing catalyst in producing immortality serum. I also wanted our hero to have a sidekick, one with deeper and more personal reasons for killing vampires, to balance our hero's materialistic ideals. What better reason than vengeance.
My main intention with FANG HUNTERS is to simply give the audience 11 mins of fun. I want to give them an inside look into our fang hunters' lifestyles, how they talk, how they operate and how they react to their toughest and most character revealing encounter to date.
I also want to explore what it would be like too root for someone who in a realistic world is considered heinous. Bruce, our protagonist, is a poacher. He hunts vampires for their fangs and sells them to the highest bidder. Does it make a difference that he's poaching vampires instead of rhinos or elephants? Does it make it less inhumane even though vampires are regarded as a threat to humans? In fact, at the end of the movie, Bruce himself questions his actions.
Writer, director, producer
Marcus Sim
