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Blood
Creek
B grade slasher flicks follow a completely different set of rules to
conventional Hollywood films. Cliches, puns, rehashed stories,
outlandish murder scenes, these things are all allowed, and in some
cases encouraged, but you need to put your own unique twist on it, don’t
take things too serious, and for god’s sake, don’t treat your audience
like an idiot.
Director Joel Schumacher knows these rules, and knows not to break these
rules, he’s worked on movies like ‘St.Elmos Fire’, ‘The Lost Boys’,
‘8mm’ and ‘The Number 23’, so he’s been around the block more than a few
times, but he also has a few inclusions such as ‘Batman & Robin’ and
‘Batman Forever’, so it’s really a question of which way did he sway
with Blood Creek?
In the 1930’s, the Nazi regime looked into fascists of the occult to
stir their rise of world domination and sent field agents all over the
planet to try and find a certain collection of stones that displayed the
swastika symbol, the power of these stones is believed to be eternal
life. One such leather-bound Nazi fossicker is Professor Richard Wirth
(Michael Fassbender), who tracks the location of one stone to the cellar
of a German family byt the name of Wollners house in the rural small
town called, Small Town. Propositioning the family with a wad of cash,
they let him stay in the family home with them so he can conduct his
study on the stone, soon enough though the true nature of the professor
and indeed of the stone is revealed, and the family are trapped in a
bloody battle together, forever. Jumping ahead to 2007 and we see the
story of Evan (Henry Cavill) who is taking care of the family of his
elder brother Victor (Dominic Purcell) who has been missing for two
years and is presumed dead. Though on this night, Victor returns,
looking like he’s travelled to hell and back, having escaped his capture
he now seeks revenge, he grabs his younger brother, enough guns and ammo
to capture Poland, and sets off to the German townhouse where they are
set to unleash hell and set matters straight.
Schumacher can get held to a few key points here, the initial story is
never really explained, it just kind of happens, you are basically told
not to question it, it just is. That is what’s known as ‘Treating your
audience like an idiot’, minus one to Schuey. Next he uses a cast of
characters that you never have a chance to connect with, you don’t
really care who lives and who dies, and the main character for the
German Wollner family is completely unclear as to what side she stands
on, for no apparent reason, minus one to Schuey. The film is a very dark
horror movie, dark in premise yes, but dark in filming, so dark
sometimes, your not actually sure if the lighting guy is hanging out at
the teamster table or not as you can’t see a damn thing, minus one to
Schuey. The acting is atrocious, the accents are a terrible mixture of
what sounds like a crazy Swiss spinoff, and an overpowering American
slanted English, it would probably have been more relevant for them to
be Scottish, the death scenes resemble a grade three Christmas play and
not only one portrail is believable, and thats simply due to the massive
amount of makeup. Minus one to Schuey. Minus four all up, Its not
looking good.
But, the movie has a premise, that while unexplained and completely
confusing at times, is fresh and will likely spawn a few more movies
from other companies trying to cash in on the concept, plus one to
Schuey. The main villain (a Professor, Nazi, Zombie, Occult Priest,
Possibly Vampire, Bald Guy) is one you could actually believe to be pure
evil, his powers are written in a way that you ask yourself ‘How the
hell are they going to kill that guy?’ he genuinely should be walked
into the halls of bad guy history. Plus one to Schuey. Once into the
meat of the movie, it’s very edge of your seat thrilling stuff, the
unknown is at every moment and you will have some overpoweringly violent
moments that are very cringe worthy. Plus one to Schuey. The villain,
rushing with superpowers from his Nazi stone, raises a horse from the
dead, turns it into a demon zombie, sends it storming through a house
trampling people and into a kitchen where it gets set on fire. Plus
seventy three to Schuey.
Blood Creek veers into the ‘horrible leave it alone’ and ‘Oh my god this
is the greatest movie ever’ category so many times during the ninety odd
minutes that it’s hard to keep track. It has some horribly frustrating
moments throughout, a lot of which are caused by the lack of light
during most of the movie, but the creative moments are extremely
fulfilling and push you through the next ten minute block of black
screen a dialogue. While the movie takes itself seriously, you will find
it hard to at times as the storyline goes from whacky to ubercrazy,
obviously not aimed at being your typical B-Grade self humour style
movie, it does have its moments. Fans of slasher flicks will love this
movie purely for those occasional glimmers of gold, regular movie goers
will wonder why this movie even warranted the HTML used on this review.
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