Richard Kuipers Five bored young billionaires become vampires in “Dead & Beautiful,” a middling horror-thriller and social satire that opens with an intriguing premise but never probes its cashed-up characters deeply enough to create gripping drama from the heightened hedonism or existential crises they experience after acquiring new powers.
Slickly photographed in a neon-drenched Taipei and featuring an attractive young cast, this riff on the eternal tale by Dutch filmmaker David Verbeek (“R U There,” “Full Contact”) scores early points by drawing parallels between mythological vampirism and the modern metaphorical vampirism of rich elites before losing its sting and meandering toward an unsurprising “surprise” conclusion.
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