Just a little bit ago, I saw a movie that revitalized the vampire subgenre. By utilizing it as a blood-soaked metaphor for addiction, Bliss was kinetic, psychedelic and oh-so-mesmerizing. It had something to say and it used vampires in such a smart—and terrifying—way. Now we have The Shed, written and directed by Frank Sabatella and the results are more mixed. It’s a fun vampire story about a very serious topic...I just wish it dug a little deeper.

It starts on an ominous note, with a hunter named Bane (Frank Whaley) running through a forest, absolutely terrified. As he leans against a tree, we see a figure in the shadows, slightly out of focus. With a flip of a stereotypical cape, the creatures descends on the poor man and we get a brief look at the vampire as it feeds. Sabatella’s concept of the vampire feels classic; Nosferatu by way of ‘Salem’s Lot’s Barlow.

Once he bites Bane, the sun comes out and quickly reduces him to ask. But the damage has already been done and now Bane is cursed. The only problem is the sunlight is creeping over the trees, shotting rays of burning death through the canopy above. Dodging between and behind trees, Bane makes it to the edge of the forest and, through a discarded tarp, manages to make it into a ramshackle shed.

The shed belongs to an old alcoholic named Ellis (Timothy Bottoms) who has been given guardianship over his grandson Stan (Jay Jay Warren) after Stan’s parents died. Our first look at Stan doesn’t paint a pretty picture. He has the start of a black eye and both his shoulder and his side are bruised. As he wakes from a nightmare, his door rattles. “How many times have I told you not to lock this door!” Ellis rails from out-of-sight and it’s immediately clear that, in addition to being a drunk, Ellis is abusive.

And as much as Stan hates his grandfather and wants to leave, he knows that Ellis is the only thing standing between him and being a ward of the state or, worse, going back to juvie. Meanwhile, school isn’t much better, as he’s often harassed by a thug named Marble (Chris Petrovski) and his small gang Pitt (Francisco Burgos) and Ozzy (Uly Schlesinger). His best friend Dommer (Cody Kostro) is also harassed on a daily basis by Marble and his crew and he is the kind of maladjusted youth who seems one bad day away from shooting up the school.

Stan is stuck in the past. He misses his fairy-tale family and his polaroid family pictures of them are the only thing that seems to make him smile. He also holds a torch for Roxy (Sofia Happonen), a girl who used to be tight with them. Dommer says she’s just outgrown them, but Roxy has a different explanation: “If it makes my life easier to hang out with one crowd or another, I’ll do what I have to, until I get out of school.” What she doesn’t understand is that you never really leave high school. The stakes just get higher.

And speaking of stakes, eventually Stan discovers the vampire hiding in his shed when it attacks his dog (Heads-up, a dog dies) and then his grandfather. And while in cinema land we might be relieved the abusive grandfather is no longer in the picture, it puts Stan in a very precarious position. How do you explain that a vampire killed your grandfather? And, regardless, with his grandfather dead, he’ll end up back in juvie or worse. While Stan tries desperately to keep the vampire secret until he figures out how to handle the increasingly precarious situation, Dommer has a different plan for the murderous monster. And soon, The Shed starts to pit the boys against each other, against society and against an evil predator who doesn’t have a care in the world about devouring them.

Right out of the gate, I loved the idea behind The Shed. It operates on familiar tropes, with bullied kids who discover a means to fight back. And then it twists it in very dark directions. There’s obviously something seductively evil about having a pet monster and the way it coos to them and cajoles them unfurls in a creepy way. For a good half of the movie, Frank Sabatella plays with this duality, particularly using it as a sounding board to look at the friendship between Dommer and Stan.

The fact the titular shed is the place that houses an unspeakable evil is a metaphor ripe for examination, particularly when you consider the turn of phrase “take you out to the woodshed” and the threats of punishment and violence it hints at. It’s the idiom made real and visceral. So when Sabatella really digs into this metaphor and the horrors these two teens are subjected to on a daily basis, it stuns as a fantastic character study. The entire emotional weight of the film hangs between these two friends and their different approaches to life. Even Roxy, who operates as the third part of the triangle, and her struggles to fit with the cool kids to stay under the radar is a fantastic addition.

Unfortunately, at some point, the movie throws away all pretense and the narrative goes into pretty typical vampiric directions, complete with spooky effects, a home invasion and gooey blood. Sure, it has a few cool set pieces as the film lurches into the third act, but it gave me whiplash as the story changed from being a rather poignant—if creepy and disturbing—story about two best friends, trying to navigate a world that has constantly thrown shit at them. Jay Jay Warren really sells the desperate situations he keeps finding himself in.

As the narrative becomes increasingly dire and the body count rises, Stan’s future seems more and more inescapable. And Sabatella manages to squeeze a ton of emotional weight from him. It’s just unfortunate that instead of being a deep, dark character study between the two friends, it devolves into a more stereotypical battle against an ancient evil with Roxy’s love for the spoils.

Still, I had a good time with this one.