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Josh Spiegel: First of all, here's a movie that should have done well. If anything else, it's about a kid who becomes a half-vampire. As we'll soon see from what is likely going to be a huge success in New Moon, vampires are still very popular with teenagers. However, the marketing was too small and unable to encapsulate in 30 seconds or an ad what the movie was about. I'm still relatively intrigued about the movie, as it's from Paul Weitz (too bad he didn't take his brother's gig directing New Moon), it stars John C. Reilly, Willem Dafoe, and Salma Hayek, but....what IS this movie? People were probably just too baffled to be interested.

Sean Collier: Please note for posterity's sake that October 23, 2009 was the date that vampires became oversaturated. Took long enough.

Jim Van Nest: I'm on the other side of the fence than Josh. The cast was the only intriguing thing about this film for me. I mean seriously, with the Twilight obnoxiousness and True Blood dominating HBO-land AND something called the Vampire Diaries on TV, I'm ready to kick Count Dracula himself in the groin. This is a plea to everyone in Hollywood about vampires. Please. Stop it now!

George Rose: Universal clearly tried to capitalize on the vampire craze right before Twilight's New Moon and Halloween. Unfortunately, vampires are most appealing to age groups old enough to understand their sexual appeal. To make it more accessible for the youth, it looks like the marketers chose to focus on the wide variety of characters and creatures in the circus. What the trailer shows is a movie that looks like the offspring of Sky High and the current fourth season of TV's Heroes. I can't even really tell if it's a vampire or mutuant movie. Whichever one it was aiming for it fell closer to John C. Reilly's Walk Hard with its sense of parody. Maybe Universal should have hired the team behind Meet the Spartans and called this Vampire Movie. It's sad that it probably would have made more money if that had happened.

Reagen Sulewski: This is a Nickelodeon channel movie that escaped somehow and got into regular release. I thought that residual vampire crazies would lift this somewhat, but the fact that it never quite figured out what movie it was supposed to be in the ads really doomed it. Also, I want to call Dateline on John C. Reilly's character.

Eric Hughes: It's probably also worth mentioning that no matter how much make-up you put on the man, John C. Reilly will never have that authentic vampire look.

Pete Kilmer: Not near enough marketing of Salma Hayek in leather. That's what killed it.

Michael Lynderey: Like Twilight last year, Cirque du Freak was going to sink or swim based on the inherent popularity of the book series it's based on. Obviously, one of the two had a bit of a bigger fanbase than the other. Considering this is a surprisingly violent PG-13 kids movie that got a real critical thrashing, it didn't have much else going for it other than turning out the base.

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