First Kill Review – Bleeds Funny

By Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)

The 2022 series ‘First Kill’ looks almost as fun and aesthetic as Netflix’s other teen romances, like ‘Never Have I Ever’… until the monsters come in. For a show about Vampires and demon hunters, the CGI is excruciatingly bad. And plenty of monsters make their appearances in the show, from ghouls to zombies, to other ghastly things that look like they were envisioned and animated in the 1990s. Kill joy.

Somewhere between ‘Twilight’ and ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’, ‘First Kill’ is about a vampire and demon-slayer falling for each other, with a very typical ‘love/lust at first sight’ story. Sarah Catherine Hook plays Juliette Fairmont, a ‘legacy vampire’ who’s recently turned 16, so she needs to stop relying on ‘blood pills’ and make her first real kill. Imani Lewis is Calliope Burns, who belongs to a famed family of monster hunters and is yet to kill her first demon. Perfect for each other? Kind of.

Unfortunately, all the exciting elements of a vampire/monster genre are poorly executed – the fight scenes lack punch and the monsters look like they are out of a college play. Juliette and Calliope spar in one of the early episodes, and what could’ve been a killer aggressive face-off, feels like a tame gymnastic-dance rehearsal. Had this series been a comedy, maybe all of it could’ve been entertaining, but the show looks like an awkward combination of ‘serious drama meets parody + B grade horror’.

While Sarah Catherine Hook and Imani Lewis make for an interesting onscreen couple, it’s Hook who carries the weight of being the star of the show. A lot of the other cast members aren’t able to pull of their parts with conviction, making it a tedious watch. Except for the LGBTQ+ representation, ‘First Kill’ brings nothing new to the table. To make things worse, episode 8 ends on a cliffhanger. The series doesn’t follow the one rule that’s very important to its own protagonists – ‘finish what you start’.

It’s a 5/10 from me.