Halfway through, you're seemingly ripped from one film and thrown straight into another.

Rating: 6/10 (19 August 2018)

'From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)' takes such a sudden, unapologetic and incredibly jarring turn in the middle of its second act - in terms of style, tone and even genre - that you feel as though you've been ripped from your seat and tossed into another film, thrown from a straight-forward but slightly seedy and interestingly mean crime-thriller into a brazenly silly and quite camp vampire gore-fest. As such, it's difficult to take seriously as an example of either movie (though I don't think 'serious' was ever one of its concerns). The worst thing is that, for how much I appreciate unique and (marketing and fame aside) surprising stories that aren't afraid to break conventions and be generally 'weird', its first half is honestly much better than its second, talking time to build proper characters and having them interact in unexpected ways that make sense within its established yet still somewhat heightened world. I'm not saying the vampire slaying isn't fairly entertaining; the tangible effects and hammy lore-twisting do make for some enjoyable sequences. It's just that the ending almost feels like it's tacked on from another piece (without any real foreshadowing or anything like that, even) and it reduces the movie's overall impact almost to the point that the finale feels like it might be better off watched in isolation. 6/10