Beyond the Rave (2008)
Directed by: Matthias Hoene
Written by: Jon Wright, Tom Grass
Starring: Jamie Dornan, Nora-Jane Noone, Tamer Hassan
Hammer’s first production in years and this is what we get! Don’t get me wrong, its an easy watch, even enjoyable in places, but I was hoping for much more than this for Hammer’s big return!
The film is broken up into segments, I can’t remember how many but literally every five minutes, a new segment starts with a brand new title. My God it gets irritating, really really irritating. I think the director was trying to be a bit of a clever clogs, but sorry mate, breaking up a film like this aint clever, its fuckin annoying!
An army guy has the night off before going to Afghanistan, so what do you do? Yeh, lets go to an all night rave, do some drugs and get pissed. He meets up with his mate who gives him the news that his girlfriend has cheated on him with some odd looking twat from last weeks rave. Army man is angry and on the war-path and wants to give his girlfriend what for and batter the twat from the rave. Off they head.
Meanwhile, a group of “Cockney Gang-sta’s” are busy stripping some guy naked and leaving him on the side of the road because he owes them “Big-time!”. Back at their local strip club, two more of these weird looking twats from the rave are sat doing what any normal guy would do at a strip club, ogling the woman dancing. But the cockneys take offence and start some shit. They beat the hell out of these two pale looking guys, and the pale people just laugh at them but it would seem Cockney has won!
Later, one of the cockneys gets attacked by pale face and they carve something into his stomach with their ugly, long fingernails. This is war! The cockneys re-group, all 3 of them, and head to the rave in search of the pale people, the same rave army man is heading to. Bugger, its all gonna kick off tonight!
We get to the rave, in the middle of nowhere and army man meets his girlfriend and smacks the pale man. The cockneys arrive, and lose again, which leads them to go to the boot of their car and toy around with what weapons to take in. One of the cockneys is Tammar Hassain, so you can imagine how great the acting is! Deep in the woods, a strange man sits smoking his illegal drugs and offers them to people passing. He is a vampire, a 600 year old vampire who has given up on the hunt and prefers to lure his victims with drugs.
Back at the rave, it turns out the pale people are vampires and they have an agenda. Lets lock all the doors, put on a bit of a show with a gorgeous, half naked girl hanging from the ceiling, get her to grab a dancer, bite his neck and spray his blood over everyone. Oddly enough, the ravers embrace this madness. Gas is turned on, and they all pass out, only to wake up to find out they are on the vampires menu! Blood and guts follow, and lots of it. There are moments of comedy gold, there are moments of awfulness but its fun, if not clever.
The cast, bad acting aside, are actually quite likeable, and you do care for Army man and his relationship. The cockneys are quite fun to watch because they are such pricks, and the music is great! There is a throat ripping scene which is quite brutal, and some of the deaths are quite inventive, its just the film never really rises above very average. The constant breaking into new segments ruins the whole flow of the proceedings and it makes it feels a bit of a mess. Its worth watching for a good Friday night beer movie, and also I suppose Hammer deserve all the attention they can get, but then, Let Me In will do all that for them.
Rating: 
interesting, thanks