
In our lives, there are events and movies that make us go, “I just can’t even with this.” BLOOD HARVEST is a 2016 full-length feature hailing from Northern Ireland. It was written and directed by George Clark. The gist is this, murders are occurring where the victim’s blood was drained from their bodies. Detective Jack Chaplin (Robert Render) is convinced it’s vampires, you know, like you do.
When he tells his superiors of this theory, they send him on a permanent vacation. He therefore enlists the help of his old partner, Hatcher (John-Pal Van der Velde), who’s acting style is a poor man’s Donald Pleasance circa Dr. Sam Loomis.
As I’m sure you can tell already, I didn’t enjoy this movie. It was work. The first victim’s scene was so bad, I thought to myself, “Oh my GOD, kill her already!” Not a good way to start a movie and the victims truly mean nothing in this movie. There’s no character development, no attachment, no feeling when they are inevitably chased down and de-blooded. They are all just fodder for a non-plot.
The killers get unmasked only 30 minutes in and as soon as they are, you’d wished they’d kept the masks they must have picked up at a backwoods Steampunk convention on. The audio is so bad in some spots you can’t hear, the edit cuts leave you for more than 30 seconds with dead silence and a black screen and there are excessive slow mo shots for NO REASON. I understand the artsy film school shots in low budget films but this is just too much.
The killers’ movement when hunting their victim is less terrifying slasher and more NPC from Skyrim. “I used to drain blood from nameless teens until I took an arrow in the knee.” At one point the killer (Alan Crawford) wore a t-shirt with a rocket ship on it…the scariest design of them all. The victims are incapable of saving themselves. At one scene I literally shouted at the screen “He cut your heels, not your knees, dumbass!”
The end has “twist” with an exposition longer than Negan’s intro monologue. What the fuck am I watching??? This movie was super low budget and that I understand. Some of my favorite movies were made on a shoestring budget, but that is no excuse for the end product. There are literally two women named Rachael that play two separate women named Julie in the script…I just…I can’t even.
I need to go scrub my eyes and my brain, and I need one of those memory sticks from Men in Black.
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