THE LITTLE VAMPIRE

Cert Running time

This bloodless animation offers thin pickings for all but the most undemanding of cinema-goers. It’s a cross-cultural bromance between two 13-year-old boys – a Transylvanian vampire with punk hair and a fresh-faced US holidaymaker on a creepy castle tour of Europe with his family. They team up to rescue the vampire’s clan from a pair of inept villains. The head baddie is voiced by Jim Carter, best known as Downton Abbey’s butler, Carson.

The only other recognisable names the budget stretches to are Miriam Margolyes and Tim Pigott-Smith, with not much left over for the animation, and even less for the script.

It mixes magic spells with some mechanical contraptions such as the infra-dead vampire locating device, and I could have done with a whole lot more of the weaponised vampire cow poo.

It’s so insubstantial it won’t cast a shadow in your memory, but it’s harmless and doesn’t totally suck.

It is, however, probably best saved for the rainiest day of the half-term holidays.