Jordan directed the lycanthropic fable The Company of Wolves and the Anne Rice adaptation Interview With A Vampire, so this film of the Moira Buffini play is right in his sweet spot. It's a heavily plotted yarn about an undead mother and daughter (Gemma Arterton and Saoirse Ronan) who subsist on the avails of prostitution and the blood of the unlucky and infirm. As the younger of the vamps falls in love with a fellow suffering from leukemia–Caleb Landry Jones, as unwell as he appeared in Antiviral–we flash back to how these two broke ground in an oppressive and patriarchal bloodsucking culture two centuries ago. Byzantium is a gothic treat, an entertainingly dense vampire tale complete with rivers of blood. It should be required viewing for all Twihards still stunned by the sparkle.
