Scream queen Barbara Crampton, the always-welcome star of many a smart if schlocky horror movie (see Chopping Mall, You’re Next, assorted Puppet Master flicks) is in her element here playing Anne, the mostly neglected and ignored spouse of suburban minister Jakob (Larry Fessenden). Years back, Anne had ambitions to travel and find adventure, but instead of marrying handsome classmate Tom (Robert Rusler), she settled for kindly if ditchwater-dull Jakob, and a lifetime of sitting in pews listening to his dreary sermons and talking to parishioners.

An assignation with old flame Tom, in town to buy a disused mill, and a stolen kiss seem like the prelude to a Mills & Boon-style tale of middle-age adultery and lust. Thankfully we’re not going in that direction; instead, this turns into a blood-splattered vampire movie when Anne is bitten but not killed by a mysterious bloodsucker known as the Master (Bonnie Aarons from The Conjuring/The Nun franchise). Soon she’s wearing clever little chokers to hid her puncture marks, lipstick the colour of haemoglobin, and insisting Jakob take her out to dinner, service her reawakened libido, and generally treat her with more respect.

Director Travis Stevens (Girl on the Third Floor) is clearly versed enough in the conventions of splatterfest to know how to deliver the grossout scenes and the one-liners needed to make them palatable. On that level, Jakob’s Wife is pretty standard; but as a comic, genre-inflected study of middle-aged female rage, it’s a gas. Crampton and Fessenden’s easy, credible chemistry keeps up a steady baseline of bickering banter that’s charming throughout. The film could have been a bit more audacious about tweaking Christian pieties, but you can’t have everything.

• Jakob’s Wife is available from 19 August on Shudder.