Thursday, March 30, 2017

BLEED (2016) [Joe's Review]

In Bleed, a gang of friends investigates the mystery of a cannibal cult leader...to death!




This whole review is going to be a spoiler. Every part after this point will be a discussion of the film's pivotal plot twist, which is that the evil cannibal really isn't all that bad and has in fact been good the whole time! See?! You were warned.

But before I get to that, I want to briefly discuss the types of characters in this movie. You've got:


Final girl - this time she's pregnant!


Non-White Best Friend - She's schizophrenic but doesn't tell anyone until they're already exploring the haunted prison!



Jerk Husband - He doesn't take the threat, or his wife, seriously.



Black Guy - Jerk Husband leads off their conversation with "So you played football, right?"



Bohemian Brother - Wears at least seventeen bracelets which is totally normal everywhere. In Hollywood.



Brother's Free Spirit Girl Friend - Isn't super chaste? DISMEMBERMENT!

Not a real interesting cast of characters! Pretty standard stuff for a scary movie. And yet it's so easy to mix and match the tropes in ways that breathe a little life into them.

Ethnic Final Girl - Has this ever happened in an American movie?

Bohemian husband - this would make his death sadder, at least.

Jerk Black Final Husband - Is there any higher level of horror movie survivor difficulty?

Brother's Bohemian Asian Boyfriend - Fuck, why not?

It's so easy to turn tropes on their heads and wind up with something better. But instead, it's all about the plot twists. So let's take that on.

The plot twist is that the psycho killer isn't really a bad guy! He's been good all along. He was a scary ghost, but look how sad he looks when the final girl realizes he's been protecting her from the redneck cultist police:



Super sad! Such feels! He was good all along. All along. Wait, why did we think he was bad again?

Oh right, he looked pretty scary.



Then he vomited blood into the bohemian girl's bath tub.




But that wasn't as bad as when he possessed her boyfriend and raped her into slitting his (but really the boyfriend's) throat with a rusty piece of iron. What a prankster.




And then bit the black guy's throat out.




Pretty bad! Gonna need to do a lot of good to counterbalance a rape, a murder by biting, and a ruined bath. Well, how about the fact that he...has a butterfly!



Well, shoot. I'd say that takes care of the bath at least!

And that pretty much takes care of what I have to say about Bleed.

Pop quiz, professor!

1) How awesome was the whistling head shot on the bohemian brother? Was that play of the game?

PH:  What made that particular shot so fantastic is that, if I remember right, it was fired by a random character--like a dude with no speaking role at all.  He just rolled into the movie and high nooned a protagonist from fifty feet and at a full sprint.

2) What the hell was the jerk husband doing all that time?

 PH:  He was probably busy disrespecting things even more deserving of his sympathy than his pregnant, terrified, wife.  Like puppies.  Or butterflies.

3) What was the purpose of the Cain files?

PH:  What?  That manila folder?  I thought that was just something they were carrying around to swat butterflies with.
 

4) How many police officers does that small town have?

PH:  Gads.  But given that the rest of the town seems to be composed of angry medieval peasantry, a robust enforcement presence is probably wise. 

For my answers to Paul's questions, check out his review of Bleed.

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