When I first saw the Eternity trailer, I will admit I was mildly excited. Apart from the grating Boksburg accent, the production quality and stunts looked quite good. Alas, having finally watched the movie tonight, I can tell you that it didn’t deliver what the advert promised.

The only things that was really good from start to finish were the camera angles and the score. Sadly everything else fell flat. The lighting was terrible and definitely not though through. The acting was atrocious for a feature film. The script was weak. And the overall direction left something to be desired.

The acrobatic stunts seen in the trailer had no purpose in the movie whatsoever. In fact, at least a quarter of the movie had absolutely no relevance to the story. The acrobatics, the indecisiveness of the female-lead when it came to party wear, even the single brilliant scene between the vampire Billy (played by Andre Frauenstein) and an elder (played by Jonathan Swart) could be cut out without any impact on the movie.

The basic story follows Billy, a low caste vampire who falls in love with a live human girl, the daughter of a scientist who has invented a serum that allows vamps to survive sunlight. A first-generation vampire (who doesn’t act very first-generation at all) wants to get the serum for himself, and takes the girl hostage, theoretically to incite the dad to give him the serum but the story gets weird at this point.

Neither the script nor the actors give the audience any reason to immerse themselves in the story. The script is weakly constructed, with equally weak dialogue. The acting is just plain horrific; I felt like I was watching a recording of a stage play, such was the over acting. There were some decent performances from Christina Storm, Hlomla Dandala, Brumilda van Rensburg, and Jonathan Swart but director, Christopher dos Santos, did not capitalise on their skills nor did he properly guide his leads.

The movie was palatable and did offer some nice effects here and there but, ultimately, failed dismally as a decent story-telling venture. Well done to the production team for creating it and getting the movie out there; I’m just sad that the quality doesn’t add to South Africa’s film industry.