Movie Review # 8

Book of Blood

Shock Value: 23 of 33
Queasiness: 27 of 33
Suspense: 29 of 34
Total Scare: 79 of 100

I found another Clive Barker story that I'd never heard of before that was turned into a movie. Book of Blood starts off like your normal ghost story. It has several familiar elements to Poltergeist and other such movies. If you liked Hellraiser, or even Midnight Meat Train (See Movie Review #2), then I would definitely recommend this movie. Barker does a good job at pointing out all of the disgusting little details. Its not just the images on the screen that give you the chills, but the ideas behind them. Also, he likes to push the story much further (and in stranger directions) than other story tellers.

If you find yourself watching this movie, you have to be very careful about finding yourself getting comfortable with the “all too familiar ghost story.” Don't forget how the movie opens, either. The first thing we see is a drifter who is caught by a sociopath who is going to kill him. The drifter doesn't struggle at all, in fact he almost seems to invite death to come.

The next thing we see is our main character: a middle aged woman professor who is also a paranormal investigator. The brilliant thing about this movie is character development. Our main character will reveal that she isn't so innocent, and although she says she's never recorded any proof of ghosts or other paranormal activity (don't worry, I'm not reviewing THAT movie) we later find out that she had several paranormal encounters when she was a child. It isn't clear how much her partner believes in the paranormal, but clearly he believes in her. As the movie plays out we see that he's very interested in her and as her relationship grows with one of her students her partner gets jealous. This is another interesting twist to this movie. Although the main character is a middle aged woman there is a kind of love-triangle between her, her partner, and a student. It's almost taboo, but then again: so is ghost hunting, isn't it?

The love scenes almost make you feel out of place, but I think it works well in this kind of movie where the audience isn't allowed to get too comfortable. Throughout the movie you want to be comfortable: this is a same-old, same-old ghost story movie, right? Wrong. The more you watch the movie the more you realize how different it is.

I won't spoil the ending, but I'll say I wish the last twenty minutes of the movie would have been made into the last half of the movie. There's a big turning point in the plot where you lose everything you're familiar with. It's no longer the same-old ghost story, but has been completely twisted into something new. Of course, the opening scene is shown again. Now we know a little more about the characters, and we think we understand that opening scene now...but no! Again, there is another twist.

While there weren't nearly as many “gross parts” to this movie the few scenes that showed blood did show A LOT. Again, this is a classic Barker strategy. I'm going to try and find this movie on DVD – its very well done for a low-budget movie.