• Friday, October 23, 2009

• Language:

  English

• Runtime:

  108 min

2009

Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, based on the popular series of books by Darren Shan, is a fantasy-adventure about a teenager who unknowingly breaks a 200-year-old truce between two warring factions of vampires. Pulled into a fantastic life of misunderstood sideshow freaks and grotesque creatures of the night, one teen will vanish from the safety of a boring existence and fulfill his destiny in a place drawn from nightmares.

16-year-old Darren (Chris Massoglia) was like most kids in his suburban neighborhood. He hung out with his best friend, got decent grades and usually stayed out of trouble. But when he and his buddy stumble upon a traveling freak show, things begin to change inside Darren. That's the exact moment when a vampire named Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly) turns him into something, well, bloodthirsty. Newly undead, he joins the Cirque Du Freak, a touring sideshow filled with monstrous creatures from a snakeboy and a wolfman to a bearded lady (Salma Hayek) and a gigantic barker (Ken Watanabe).

As Darren flexes his newfound powers in this dark world, he becomes a treasured pawn between the vampires and their deadlier counterparts. And while trying to survive, one boy will struggle to keep their brewing war from devouring what's left of his humanity.

Taglines

• Meet Darren. He's sixteen going on immortal.

Trivias

• Students who attended a school in which a few scenes of the movie were shot were cast as extras.
• A portion of the film was shot in Studio 28 at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. It is the oldest known sound stage in the history of the studio.
• Some of the characters required a great deal of prosthetics and makeup. Prosthetics did not quite add the height needed on certain shots for the character of Mr. Tall played by Ken Watanabe. Although Watanabe's height of 6ft is tall a body double was cast for certain shots. Trevon Flores, a local basketball player, stands at 6-foot-10, 210-pounds and was used for certain shots to show the abnormal height of Mr. Tall. Additionally Watanabe utilized in pre-production and production, dialogue coaches Kathleen S. Dunn and Francie Brown respectfully to further enhance his performance as the circus barker.
• This is the first time Paul Weitz makes a film without help from his brother Chris Weitz
• What drew John C. Reilly to play Larten Crepsley was "the fact that it was a real person, that he wasn't some supernatural mystical being that can turn into a vampire bat. The powers weren't so extreme that it was just another thing altogether, that this guy was a person who was alive in the 1800s who was essentially about my age. If you account the slow aging, he is forty something years old" he said.