There is a very specific kind of movie that kicks the door down in the first five minutes, screams its title at you, and then never once considers taking a breath. Vampires Zombies… From Space!, directed by Michael Stasko, is that movie.
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The cold open is genuinely inspired. It nails the cozy paranoia of 1950s sci fi horror with an absurdist grin plastered across its face. Flying saucers. Small town dread. Dialogue that sounds like it was written after someone binged drive in creature features for a week straight. There is affection here. Real affection. You can feel the filmmakers reaching back toward the atomic age, toward matte paintings and rubber monsters and melodrama played dead serious.
And then the movie hits the gas…not sure if its diesel or nitrous oxide though.
From minute one, there is action. There is screaming. There are vampire zombies clawing at locals in Marlow. Dracula, apparently bored with the old Transylvanian routine, has decided to turn a Canadian small town into his undead space army. Our heroes are a grizzled detective, a skeptical rookie cop, a chain smoking greaser, and a determined young woman who has every right to be radicalized after aliens blew up her mom. That sentence alone should tell you what kind of movie this is.
The gore is surprisingly solid. Within the context of the throwback aesthetic, the blood splatter lands with a modern punch. It is jarring in a way that mostly works. The film wants to feel like a lost relic from the Hammer era that someone accidentally dipped in 2026 viscera. When it leans into practical gore, it earns points.
And yes, I said Hammer.
There is clear love for the old Hammer Film Productions style. The dramatic lighting. The bold colors. The slightly theatrical performances. Those movies lived and died by their sets, by the textured castles and fog soaked graveyards that felt tactile and immersive. Here is where Vampires Zombies… From Space! stumbles a bit. The establishing shots are lovely. Truly. They sell a world. But once we move inside, the budget starts to show. A couple of pieces of furniture. A prop or two. Hammer movies sold themselves in the details. So many bottles in the laborartories. So many small details in the sets. The same detail doesn’t exist here. Black backdrops end up doing a lot of heavy lifting. It never completely derails the experience, but it does take you out of the fantasy. You find yourself noticing the- edges of the stage and the good enough mise-en-scene.
There is also a very specific visual reference point that feels almost too on the nose. The vampires and the spaceship seem lifted straight from a well worn Choose Your Own Adventure paperback about space vampires. I say that with a strange mix of admiration and confusion. It is both charming and distractingly literal.
The model work on the UFO is, in a word, a hoot. In an era where generative AI imagery is getting more convincing by the week, there is something weirdly refreshing about visible miniatures and slightly wobbly effects. At the same time, you cannot help but wonder if leaning this hard into retro craft in 2026 is an aesthetic choice or a financial one. Probably both.
Tonally, the film is chaos. Not angry chaos. Not nihilistic chaos. Just big, loud, self aware chaos. There are genuinely funny lines. “Who farted in your cornflakes” got a real laugh out of me. The bat scene, drenched in Dutch angles, is so visually committed to its bit that it loops back around to being kind of brilliant. The zombies look suspiciously like they wandered in from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which will either read as a loving easter egg or a confusing aesthetic overlap depending on your millennial baggage.
But here is the thing. The comedy is very aware of itself. It is all winks and nudges. The script, co written by Jakob Skrzypa, Alex Forman, and Stasko, often feels like it is elbowing you in the ribs. I found myself wishing the film trusted the material more. The 1950s sci fi and Hammer horrors it clearly adores were not camp because they were making jokes. They were earnest. This movie is a lot of things. Earnest is not one of them.
When a character says something like “I’d rather be killed than murdered,” the joke lands. Sort of. But it also underscores the tonal confusion. Is Dracula’s son looking 40 part of the gag? Is that a bit? I spent a surprising amount of time wondering if things were intentionally absurd or accidentally so. For some viewers, that fun chaos will be the point. For others, it may feel like the movie is daring you to take it seriously and then laughing when you try.
The film’s festival run is impressive on paper, scooping up awards from places like the Ravenna Nightmare Film Festival and the Melbourne Underground Film Festival. I do not doubt that it plays like gangbusters with midnight crowds primed for outrageous genre mashups. In that environment, with an audience ready to hoot and holler, this probably sings. Watching it in a quieter setting, the seams show more.
Cinematographer Ken Amlin does solid work within constraints. The liberal use of Dutch angles borders on parody but remains visually lively. Composer Ian McGregor Smith’s score keeps the energy up, leaning into pulp bombast.
In the end, Vampires Zombies… From Space! is a movie I admire more than I love. I am deeply affectionate toward its Hammer influences and its atomic age ambitions. I just wish it had leaned harder into genuine homage instead of modern snark or worse yet pastiche. The bones are there for a truly great throwback. What we get instead is a loud, messy, intermittently charming creature feature that will absolutely find its audience.
Tyler has been the editor in chief of Signal Horizon since its conception. He is also the Director of Monsters 101 at Truman State University a class that pairs horror movie criticism with survival skills to help middle and high school students learn critical thinking. When he is not watching, teaching or thinking about horror he is the Director of Debate and Forensics at a high school in Kansas City, Missouri.