The vampire film genre has gone in some surprising directions in recent years. Although a betting man would be rash to place his money against the continuing appeal of cobwebbed castles, creaking coffins, and European royalty of dubious propriety, movies such as “Let The Right One In,” “Thirst,” and “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Midnight” prove that the vampire is an incredibly elastic motif on which to hang a story. The latter film posits the vampire not only as a Muslim, but as a skateboarder. Take that, Bram Stoker.

“Blood Relatives” is more modest in ambition and scale than those films, though no less idiosyncratic; like them, it gains headway by working against expectations. As portrayed by Noah Segan, who also wrote and directed the film, Francis the vampire is handsome, yes, but also down on his luck and, go figure, a dab hand at auto repair. 

Francis spends his nights driving through the backroads of the United States in a markedly déclassé muscle-car. In preparation for the oncoming day and its corruscating sunlight, Francis snuggles up in the back seat after having affixed yesterday’s newspaper to the windows. He has a weakness for human flesh — not just for blood, but pleasures of a less visceral sort.

The urchin who’s been pursuing him across the American Southwest turns out to be Francis’s daughter. Jane (Victoria Moroles) is the progeny of a one-night stand Francis undertook with an Idaho woman some 15 years back. Through some inventive web searching, Jane locates dad after her mother has died through means that are, just for the record, not supernatural.

Jane is a consternating mix of mom and dad. She’s able to get by in sunlight, albeit with an ample slathering of sunscreen, but has a constant craving for red meat, preferably raw. Rather than hunkering down with a distant relative of mom’s, Jane decides that it’s preferable to partner with her peripatetic, blood-sucking dad. 

During the course of finagling parenthood with a recalcitrant Francis, we learn that Jane, when provoked, is capable of snapping necks and growing fangs. Jane is headstrong as well, and insists that she and Francis settle down and be as much of a family as can be expected given the circumstances.

Did I mention that Francis is Jewish? At the beginning of “Blood Relatives,” atmospheric background music gives it up to the distinctive keening of a klezmer clarinet. When Francis attempts to get help from a Midwest auto-parts dealer, words like “schlep” and “mensch” don’t get him very far. Later, we note the numbers tattooed on his arm. At one point, Jane rifles through her father’s personal effects and discovers faded family photos and European IDs. We are led to believe that Francis made a deal with the devil, or something like him anyway, to escape the camps.

Francis’s Jewishness is the novelty here and, frankly, the least interesting thing about “Blood Relatives.” Would that Mr. Segan the actor knew how to assay Yiddishisms like “farkakte” and “oy vey” with any kind of authority. Instead, they clank out of his mouth as if he were encountering them for the first time. 

Fortunately, Mr. Segan the director knows that the strength of his picture is Ms. Moroles, who scrambles into the film with an open-faced elan that recalls the doyennes of screwball comedies from the 1930s. Ms. Moroles has been knocking around various teen-centered television shows for some time now. With any luck, Mr. Segan’s revisionist horror-comedy should do much to increase her cache. The 21st century could, after all, use its own Claudette Colbert.