REVIEW #149 True Blood (7 Seasons)

True Blood follows Sookie Stackhouse, a waitress from Louisiana who has the strange ability to read peoples minds. Set in a world where vampires have revealed their existence to the human population, Sookies life changes drastically when she meets vampire Bill Compton.

CAST & THE ACTING 

There are actually a lot of huge stars in True Blood, Academy Award winner Anna Paquin leads as Sookie Stackhouse and throughout the 7 seasons I found her performances were slightly hit and miss. She would deliver fantastic emotional monologues one minute but in other scenes it could come across as very cringeworthy. Arguably the biggest name on the cast, Alexander Skarsgård played the role of Eric Northman, the 1000 year old vampire. I think you could summarise his performances in a similar way to Paquin’s in that he had his peaks and dips in quality. My personal favourite performance has to be from the late Nelsan Ellis, he played Lafayette and he had it down to absolute perfection. He created such a likeable character and his performances could have you weeping one moment but laughing out loud the next. A close second would be Ryan Kwanten, he portrayed the lovable idiot Jason Stackhouse and although it wasn’t necessarily the best acting performance he delivered a lot of laughs with his execution of the character. Something I enjoyed a lot was seeing a lot of well known actors appear in the series, before they had gone on to be successful in the industry. I had many moments where the meme of Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would apply (we all know the one!).

THE STORYLINE

The supernatural, specifically Vampires and Werewolves is a storyline that I absolutely love and I had heard about True Blood for many years but after taking such a liking to The Vampire Diaries I just couldn’t see how it could compete. That being said, I did thoroughly enjoy True Bloods take on the genre. Having a world where humans knew about the existence of vampires was a nice spin that created a lot of interesting sub plots such as The Authority and the Vampire campaigners! It’s ultimately romance driven, centring around the love triangle between Sookie, Ben Compton and Eric Northman. Granted this isn’t exactly new, Twilight had it, The Vampire Diaries had it, it’s something that’s been done a thousand times before. However it doesn’t ever seem to ever get stale for some reason. The series tackles other supernaturals like fairies, shifters and witches too and I’m usually not a fan of overcrowding a project with as many creatures as possible but I think True Blood handled it well. There are some slower seasons but you can expect that with a 7 season run time, overall the storyline is enjoyable and there are plenty of characters that the audience can both fall in love with and absolutely hate!

CINEMATOGRAPHY & SPECIAL EFFECTS 

For the most part the cinematography was pretty good, as you would expect the quality improved with each season and it gradually got more ambitious with the special effects as it progressed The vampires themselves looked perfectly realistic and the way they tackled the design of vampires which met the ‘true death’ was brave considering they basically implode with blood but even that looked fairly realistic too. The most obvious aspect in terms of special effects would have to be when fairies used their ‘light’ it didn’t necessarily look bad but it was certainly less subtle. Set in Louisiana, there were plenty of scenic woodland shots that when nighttime fell contributed the allure of danger and horror. So a respectable performance in this category for sure.

OVERALL (7.9/10)

I really enjoyed True Blood, it took a while to really hit its stride but it’s filled with really lovable characters that make it a joy to watch. Do I prefer it over The Vampire Diaries? I don’t think I do, but nonetheless it certainly gives it a good shot. The storyline had a freshness to it by having more unique aspects such as Vampires outing themselves to the human world. As a result each season has a number of sub plots to work with which helped maintain my interest for the entire 7 seasons. Granted it had its slower seasons but nothing you wouldn’t expect from a long running series. There is a really good cast but the acting can sometimes be a bit hit and miss and the dialogue makes it a little cringey at times but overall I liked it and would definitely recommend it.

Thanks for reading.

Callan