Variable blood flow – Newspaper Kommersant No. 6 (7451) dated 01/14/2023

The horror film “Blood”, directed by Brad Anderson, was released. The authors combine several proven horror tropes in the film at once: vampires, demonic children, sacrificial maternal love with nightmarish consequences, but they do it too slowly and sadly to really scare, believes Yulia Shagelman.

Anyone who has seen at least two or three horror films in their life knows that moving into an old abandoned house with gloomy portraits hanging on the walls is usually a bad idea. It’s good that in the minds of the writers (in this case, Will Honley, for whom “Blood” is the first independent work without co-authors) there are still characters who are not familiar with this concept. Take, for example, nurse Jessica (Michelle Monaghan), who, after her divorce from her husband (Skeet Ulrich), moves with her two children to a house inherited from her aunt and clearly in need of renovation. While the eldest daughter Tyler (Skylar Morgan Jones) diligently unpacks the boxes, the younger Owen (Finlay Woytak-Hissong), of course, manages to climb onto the roof of the barn and jump off it, but, fortunately, does not break anything, so both receive from their mother just a light scolding. At this time, the family golden retriever Pippin begins to behave strangely, growl and howl, but no one pays attention to it.

However, contrary to expectations, the evil, the presence of which is implied by the laws of the genre, does not live at all in the house, but on a dry lake nearby, in the middle of which, for greater horror, a gnarled tree with a dark hollow rises. Tyler and Owen go there to fish, not knowing that the reservoir from the old photos no longer exists, and along the way, the girl prophetically tells her brother a horror story about vampires who kidnap children walking in these places. Instead of fishing on the lake, first Pippin, and then the children, get stuck in the mud, and again everything goes well, but it becomes already difficult to get rid of the feeling that next time the kids will not be so lucky.

Indeed, Pippin first escapes, and then returns, in the best traditions of the “Pet Sematary”, not at all a cute playful dog, but a growling monster with satanic sparkling eyes. He pounces on Owen, gnaws through his artery, and the boy has to be sent to the hospital, where his life hangs in the balance. All this does nothing to improve Jess’s relationship with her ex-husband, who has been trying all this time to take custody of her children from her, since in the past she took drugs and showed herself not to be the best mother.

The chance to prove her parental qualities, albeit in a rather peculiar way, is presented to her when it turns out that Owen survived after being bitten, but has changed a lot. Now the boy needs fresh blood on a regular basis, otherwise he immediately begins to die again. First, the mother, using a service pass, steals blood from the hospital, then, when new rules are introduced there that restrict access, she learns to skin rabbits, then she gives her own blood to the child, weakening before our eyes. But everything is not enough for the boy, so it is not difficult to guess that completely outsiders and innocent people will soon be drawn into this story.

The whole film, in fact, is built on a simple metaphor of parental self-denial and, obviously, wants not so much to tickle the viewer’s nerves as to make them think about where the boundaries of this self-denial lie – and at what point is it time to call the police or arrange an exorcism rite. Brad Anderson, who shoots mostly TV series but occasionally makes feature films ranging from thriller to spy thriller, knows how to build a stylish dark picture. But with the creation of an ominous atmosphere – the main component of a successful horror film – there are obvious problems in “Blood”, it turns out to be too sparse. Alas, not only the unfortunate Owen suffers from acute anemia here.