Jerry has survived centuries of human warfare and now helps keep a vampire metal band on the road. There is an appealing change of scale in that arrangement. His narration accompanies Civil War spectacle, yet immortality has left him handling the practical business of other people’s gigs. In Scott B. Hansen’s Devour, Gus Langley plays this ancient bloodsucker as the roadie who claims to have founded the Virginia Bitches. I wanted to spend time with the person connecting those two lives: the witness to history who still has a van to worry about.
Dylan’s recruitment offers a way to get closer to him. Played by J. Gaven Wilde, the human newcomer is sent to collect bags of blood before his employment is even settled. It is a funny introduction to a workplace where the unusual errands arrive before the paperwork. It also creates a small expectation of reliance. Dylan is entering a group whose appetites and abilities he cannot share, with Jerry apparently positioned to help him understand what he has joined. Their difference could make the touring arrangement feel precarious and oddly companionable.
The band’s own habits help that possibility along. These women feed on fans in venue toilets, travel with a nodding Dracula on the dashboard, and belong to a world where “fangers” has replaced the less acceptable “vampires.” The pleasures are cheerfully grubby.
Feeding becomes another activity fitted around a show, and the dashboard ornament turns a familiar horror figure into ordinary van clutter. When a breakdown strands them near a cannibal town led by a warlock, the premise has a useful comic reversal waiting: a group accustomed to treating people as food encounters people with appetites of their own.
That early willingness to enjoy their company becomes harder to sustain when the film asks for concern. During the later werewolf attack, an injured Dylan begs Jerry to turn him while they are in a school bus. Jerry says he cannot, and the exchange slides into a joke about the act looking gay.
The scene briefly brings their unequal positions into focus. One person is frightened and dependent; the other possesses centuries of experience and a form of survival he cannot, or will not, offer. The joke occupies the space where Jerry’s response might acquire meaning. Dylan’s fear gets dropped before it can change how we feel about either man.
A vampire-band comedy has plenty of room for flippancy. The toilet feeding works because its casualness tells us something about the women’s relationship to their fans. The bus exchange uses casualness to leave a relationship unexplored. Desiree Hansen’s screenplay has brought its human recruit to a point where his connection to Jerry matters, then hurries away from the request. Jerry’s long history remains something he can announce rather than something we learn to trust through his behavior. The film sacrifices an opportunity for attachment that could have carried us through some very rough action.
There is practical work here worth defending. Creature costumes, prosthetics, and animatronics, with veteran designer Wayne Anderson contributing to the effects, give the monster gathering a physical basis. The isolated gore has a tangible quality that suits the film’s disreputable humor. Rough creature features can invite an audience to enjoy the ingenuity of a disguise or the extravagance of a wound. Those pleasures do not require expensive polish. They do need the surrounding images to let us accept what we are looking at long enough to feel delight, disgust, or anticipation.
Jerry’s waterfall tumble makes that acceptance difficult early on. His awkwardly moving figure is followed through four abrupt changes of camera position, breaking the continuity of the fall. Instead of following a body through space, we keep having to reacquaint ourselves with the image. The immediate response is distraction. A fall should make us anticipate impact, even if the victim is an immortal vampire and the sequence is played for ridiculous excess. Here, the changes in viewpoint and the figure’s movement draw attention toward the construction of the shot before that anticipation has time to develop.
Later violence has an even larger problem with consequences. Figures remain standing through severe mutilation, while people run over by a van largely disappear beneath its wheels, leaving little trace on the road. The action repeatedly removes the physical response that would make the damage register.
Blood that looks convincing in quieter material becomes watery or strangely smooth during the effects-heavy passages, and fire and explosions sit awkwardly beside the photographed scenes. The apparent generative imagery is distracting through these specific failures of movement and texture. A severed face or crushed body becomes an event we recognize intellectually without much accompanying recoil.
The expanding monster population keeps offering fresh reasons to hope the film will recover. Zombies, sirens with sonic attacks, a minotaur, and a werewolf join the cannibals and warlock. That variety could shift the group’s vulnerability with each encounter. Yet the repeated injury outcomes make the creatures’ differences less exciting in practice. New appearances arrive faster than new sensations. Cornfield running and additional violence fill out a runtime approaching two hours, while the thin connection to Jerry and Dylan leaves little emotional momentum to carry between the attacks.
The concert material still supplies some of the rowdy pleasure promised by the touring setup. Metal music gives this world a fitting sound, and the werewolf’s initial appearance briefly renews the attraction of watching an extravagant creature take over the screen. Its prolonged rampage wears that interest down. Repeated kills stop providing surprises, and the music keeps urging excitement after the images have made impact difficult to believe. During the late action, attention drifts toward the next body’s response: will it fall, remain upright, or disappear? Following those inconsistencies occupies the seconds that should have belonged to fearing the creature’s next move.
Devour arrived in select theaters on October 9, 2026, followed by its video-on-demand release on October 13, 2026. The action-horror feature follows an all-female metal band stranded in a remote, hostile town following a broken-down tour van, forcing them into a desperate struggle against a cannibalistic cult and supernatural horrors.
Where to Watch Devour (2026) Online
Full Credits
Title: Devour
Distributor: Digital Thunderdome Studios, Flying Banzai Productions
Release date: October 9, 2026 (Theaters), October 13, 2026 (VOD)
Running time: 1 hour 53 minutes (113 minutes)
Director: Scott B. Hansen
Writers: Scott B. Hansen, Desiree Hansen
Producers and Executive Producers: Desiree Hansen, Scott B. Hansen
Cast: Heidi Shepherd, KateLynn E. Newberry, Chelsea LeSage, Catherine Alexandra Lucchesi, John Wells, Gus Langley, Gavin Wilde, Jacob Lyn
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Scott B. Hansen
The Review
Devour
Devour made me want to enjoy the company of its vampire musicians, then steadily weakened that affection. The grubby touring humor, practical creatures, and metal music offer real pleasures. Jerry’s response to Dylan’s desperation leaves their relationship underdeveloped, while inconsistent effects drain the violence of physical impact. A prolonged monster rampage turns early curiosity into fatigue. There is a scrappy creature comedy worth enjoying in these pieces, but too little of its excitement survives the assembly.
PROS
- Amusing vampire-band touring details.
- Tangible practical creatures and gore.
- Rowdy metal concert material.
CONS
- Jerry and Dylan’s relationship remains underdeveloped.
- Inconsistent effects weaken violence and danger.
- Repetitive action stretches the film toward exhaustion.
