A nurse, who’s also a mother of two children, finds herself in a terrible position when her son gets bitten by their dog, infecting him in a way she has never encountered before.
Flawed but pseudorealistic and suspenseful. It starts off as a standard American horror in an unreasonably huge, old, creaky house where anything can go awfully wrong. Well, something does go awfully wrong, but it doesn’t have to do with the house. Actually, until the inciting incident, the dog’s biting, all of it seems a bit too American, but brace yourselves as it gets scary. Dramatic and scary! Will Honley’s script is tight, but director Brad Anderson and Michelle Monaghan make these dramatic and scary scenes as solid as they come.
Watch out for the pace and build-up! See, from the moment Jess realises what is happening, how she reacts, and how it escalates. Questions such as: “How long can this go on?” and “How is this going to end?” will fill your mind. Now, the nature of the script presents a tremendous obstacle for both the writer and the director: to make the audience empathise with a mother who would do anything for her child – moral, immoral, illegal, etc. – and then make them deal with the fact that “anything” is actually more than they can handle. Which of her actions will tip the scales, and to which side?
What Honley has done differently is to offer you a dramatic and humanistic approach to a “disease” that you have seen before in other horror sub-genres, but he and Anderson only hint at it; they let you speculate while keeping you on the edge of your seat. What also needs to be addressed is the excellent casting: Other than Monaghan, Skeet Ulrich, Finlay Wojtak-Hissong, and Skylar Morgan Jones deliver the dark performances the narrative requires.
Blood has a beautiful rhythm and is inundated with eerie wide shots, meaningful close-ups, and disturbing Dutch angles. Stick until the very end, which holds, literally, no punches! Again, it is flawed in parts but a good cinematic experience overall.
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Solidarity for all the innocent lives who suffer the atrocities of war!
Stay safe!
