Summer of Blood

Summer of Blood is the best—and most likely only—Brooklyn vampire movie since Wes Craven’s 1995 Eddie Murphy vehicle Vampire in Brooklyn. Director-writer-star-Turkish Zach Galifianakis, Onur Tukel, pays tribute to the horror movie trope while completely upending it with the hipster sensibility so commonly associated with the borough. The film is infused with a Woody Allen wit that’s at times hilarious. Tukel plays a neurotic schlub named Erik who lives somewhere in either Greenpoint or Williamsburg, eats at cool outdoor restaurants and dates impossibly attractive women who seem a bit out of reach for his short, chubby, hairy, dickish persona (the movie’s title has been abbreviated as “S.O.B.” on posters for good reason).
As he walks through Brooklyn one night, having just turned down his beautiful girlfriend’s marriage proposal, Erik stumbles upon a vampire’s victim. He nervously banters to the man while he bleeds out, a perfect Seinfeld-ian moment of utterly comedic self-absorption. Erik is a character you love to cringe at, but Tukel doesn’t overplay his neuroses and misanthropic tendencies.