Available on DVD “Stake Land”

Nick Damici and Connor Paolo in Stake Land

Jim Mickle and Nick Damici’s latest collaboration is filled with fanged bloodsuckers, but the vampire movie label doesn’t fit. The filmmakers seemed to choose their antagonist just to spend the rest of the film being contrary to expectations.

Stake Land bursts with action, ideas and interesting characters. If you have to pick a category, the movie should be filed with zombie movies or post-apocalyptic Westerns. But there’s a spare intimacy and slow-building tension that makes the movie a closer cousin to Winter’s Bone than Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

Damici is Mister, a vampire killer who rescues teen Martin (Connor Paolo) in Pennsylvania, and they travel north toward Canada visiting the remaining pockets of humanity. The first scene features Martin’s baby brother getting eaten and discarded like a chicken wing, and that’s nowhere near the peak of grim imagery. There are bad people out there, including the Brotherhood, a pseudo-Christian group that seems to be siding with the vampires.

There’s also a strong foundation of humanity, as the jaded warriors meet a very functional new family played almost exclusively by actors you used to love and haven’t seen in a while — including Witness star Kelly McGillis as a nun, and Fresh protagonist Sean Nelson all grown up as a military vet.

Director/writer Mickle and co-writer Damici are guilty of too-convenient plot turns. And the last 20 minutes jarringly turns into a Joss Whedon TV pilot. But there are so many wonderful details packed in between that any flaws are easily forgiven. The Brotherhood’s method of using aircraft filled with vampires to attack cities is a particularly genius Sept. 11 allusion.

The cinematography has a distinct Terrence Malick vibe, and the production design and location scouting are outstanding — taking advantage of several real-life post-industrial wastelands in rural America. Fans of low budget survival horror will be thrilled. This is a bold and memorable step forward in the genre.