With sure-handed direction driving a moody tone, the steadily paced and character-driven story proves to be more than your average monster fare.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 7, 2023

The pace is deliberately measured, with time to spare for the orphan hero's elegiac voiceover narration. When the action comes, however, it does so in savage and bloody bursts.

| Dec 5, 2020

Don't misunderstand -- if you want to follow a few tough folks battling their way through a monster-infested world, Stake Land delivers. It just could have been thought out more thoroughly.

| Original Score: B- | Feb 15, 2019

Essentially a far-better-than-average B-movie, slick in presentation and able to keep up a steady pace.

| May 15, 2018

This is no gallows comedy, it's a survival drama in the mode of The Walking Dead. It has more in common with The Road or George Romero's late Dead films than most vampire films...

| Feb 12, 2016

Stake Land is intelligently rendered horror. It's a cut above more recent efforts, being an accomplished and thoughtful piece of work and an overall, enjoyable watch.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 21, 2013

Stake Land has strong characters, a lucid script, plenty of action, and something more substantial to make it better-than-average.

| Original Score: 7/10 | Dec 29, 2011

May be the best blunt-force-trauma, tear-your-throat-out vicious vampire film since Near Dark.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 15, 2011

it's as dark as Harry Potter 19 might have been, and keener on exploring deeper themes than having an all-slaying, all-spurting, all-squirting orgy of fangbanging fun.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 16, 2011

Mickle's observation of a devastated working-class America is so sharp that the horror elements, though effectively handled, come to feel like an afterthought.

| Sep 12, 2011

More admirable than fulfilling, expelling more effort with atmosphere than story, wasting time with stares when legitimate tension is desperately needed.

| Original Score: C | Aug 16, 2011

What sets this movie apart, however, is the appearance of a bizarre religious cult that could be more dangerous than the monsters. If only it had gone farther...

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 5, 2011

There's a scruffy immediacy to the direction... but also a grace to the imagery and a commitment to the performances.

| Aug 3, 2011

The Road on supernatural steroids, the New York Times called it, and that's a pretty good short handle for it.

| Jul 15, 2011

Although admirable for a low budget horror thriller, this is let down by inept storytelling.

| Jun 22, 2011

Like Romero, Mickle has a pragmatic attitude to genre convention: even the corniest stereotypes can be turned to new purposes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 22, 2011

Like the film version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, it has quasi-religious overtones and one very good scene...

| Jun 19, 2011

A super- low-budget-yet-visually-evocative genre movie done with almost utter earnestness.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 17, 2011

Somehow its posse of American travellers, attempting to reach the Eden of Canada while assailed by vampires, seems a little dull.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2011

The postapocalyptic landscape has become so familiar of late (The Road, The Book of Eli) it puts pressure on low-budget indies like this to deliver something new.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2011