Vampires on tour and a killer cast… so why no bite?

The Hotel Transylvania franchise has the sort of voice cast that other animated children’s films can only dream of – Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Mel Brooks, Steve Buscemi and, here, Kathryn Hahn – yet it’s so difficult to warm to. I found Hotel Transylvania 3: A Monster Vacation (G) ★★ loud, charmless and not very funny, although the first two films took more than $800m at the global box office, so it’s clear not everyone agrees.

It’s easy to blame the problem on the central voice performance of Sandler as Dracula, who runs a hotel in Transylvania and, as the new film begins, is very much in need of a holiday himself.

The character Sandler creates, however, is not someone you want to spend a lot of time with. But there’s another problem too, which is the essential wooliness of the basic idea. A hotel for vampires and other horror-film characters has a certain logic but that they’re joined by a random selection of spiky/blobby/tentacled monsters seems a bit lazy and annoying. The only thing I warmed to was the visual depiction of the Bermuda Triangle, a vast three-sided ocean hole piled high with shipwrecks. Everything else? Disappointing.

In Daniel Kokotajlo’s debut feature, Apostasy (12A) ★★★, the dreadful scenario of a young Jehovah’s Witness in desperate need of a blood transplant – forbidden by their religion – gets a thorough examination, resulting in a drama that, while undeniably slow and bleakly awkward, is also as interesting as it is disturbing. It also features three knockout performances from the actresses at the centre of events – the superb Siobhan Finneran, who plays the God-fearing and unbending matriarch, Ivanna; Molly Wright as Alex, who received blood as a baby and is therefore considered somehow tainted; and Sacha Parkinson, playing the elder sister whose illegitimate pregnancy will shake the family faith to its core. What results is no fun at all but certainly leaves its mark.

Matthew Bond