Vampires: Los Muertos (R)
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Caution: potential spoilers.

This is a direct-to-video sort-of-sequel to Vampires. It came out in 2002, but I didn't see it until 2015, a week after watching the original. Well... I really didn't care for the first movie, so I wasn't sure what to expect of this one. I was hoping I'd like it better, and as it turned out, I did. I don't quite remember if I'd read anything about this, when it first came out, but I do remember being aware of the title for several years. Anyway, now that I've seen it, I can say that I felt like it wasn't trying as hard as the original was to be something "special" or different from other vampire movies. Since it is mostly set in Mexico, I suppose one could say that it's sort of a western, like the original was trying to be. But also sort of not. The point is, I think whatever the movie was trying to be, I felt like it did a better job of it than the original did. Maybe that's just because I found the characters a bit more likable in this movie than the ones in the original. The writing still wasn't great, but I didn't find it as poor as in the original, and the same goes for the acting. Of course, that's just me; probably most (or all) critics would say the first movie was better. Probably most viewers would, too. But... to each their own.

Anyway, none of the characters from the first movie appear in this one, though it's clearly set in the same fictional universe, and there are a few connections to the first movie. It begins with a vampire hunter named Derek Bliss (Jon Bon Jovi) killing a vampire. Later, he gets a call from a contact, who tells him about an anonymous new client. This client insists Derek put together a team, which he doesn't want to do, as he prefers working alone. I guess his contact provides a list of hunters who might join him, including Adam Guiteau (the priest from the first film). Unfortunately, it turns out that he, and all the other hunters on the list, have recently been killed by vampires. In the course of his search for these hunters, he meets a teenager named Sancho (Diego Luna), who helps him kill a few vampires who had killed one of the hunters he was looking for. Sancho is interested in continuing to work with Derek, but he tells the kid to go home.

Later, Derek looks for another hunter, who works at a coffee shop (at least that's what people call it, but it seemed more like a diner, to me). While he's waiting to talk to the hunter, he meets a customer named Zoey (Natasha Gregson Wagner), who he determines to be a vampire, because he has this little scope that tells him people's body temperatures, and hers is way too low to be human. He plans to kill her, but first goes to the bathroom. He's in there for less than a minute, and in that time another woman- the master vampire- comes into the coffee shop and kills everyone, including the hunter he was waiting to talk to. (Incidentally, the internet tells me her name is Una, though I never heard anyone say that in the film.) When Derek comes out and finds everyone dead, he leaves in a hurry. Later, he comes across Zoey standing in the road, wanting to hitch a ride. He doesn't trust her (though it's very confusing that she can walk around in daylight), but he agrees to take her with him, for no apparent reason. And she tells him that she went to a doctor who had no idea what she'd been infected with, when she was bitten by a vampire a year ago, but he gave her experimental medicine, which has kept her from craving blood or being hurt by sunlight.

He also learns that Zoey sometimes gets visions involving vampire attacks, and a recent one involved a monastery where Derek had recently been. They go there and find all the monks have been killed, except one: Father Rodrigo, who tells them that Una had stolen the black cross (from the first movie), which Guiteau had been hiding there. She wants to get a priest to perform the ceremony that would allow her to survive in daylight. Also, it turns out that Sancho has been following Derek. So now Derek, Zoey, Sancho, and Rodrigo form a team, though Derek is reluctant, since he's the only real hunter among them. However, his contact calls again, to tell him about an experienced vampire hunter named Ray Collins, who would come to Mexico to join them in searching for Una. (He's played by Darius McCrary, and I found it a bit amusing to see Eddie from Family Matters as a badass.) The five of them go to a village where Una and her vampires have been terrorizing the locals, and they're eventually joined by an old man from the village, in seeking the vampires at some old ruins, or whatever. And um... a bunch of other stuff happens, none of which I want to reveal. (Though I did say earlier that there are a few connections to the first movie. One of them was the mention of Guiteau, one was the cross and the ceremony, and another thing is the fact that the hunters in this movie like to stab vampires with spears attached to a winch and cable, to drag them out into the sunlight.) Anyway... I guess that's all I have to say.

Followed by Vampires: The Turning