Blood Trails

MARCH 22, 2007

GENRE: CRAP, SURVIVAL
SOURCE: DVD (SCREENER)

Blood Trails: Yet another mind-numbingly awful pile of shit from Lionsgate.

LG is a strange company. They are probably the best studio for horror (Saw, See No Evil, US release of The Descent,) but they are also responsible for (or distribute) the most rancid shit imaginable. Dark Ride, for example, is quite possibly the worst slasher movie ever made. Now we have this, the worst “survival” horror movie ever made.

Note to writers – if your lead cheats on her boyfriend, she’s not sympathetic, especially when the boyfriend is a pretty nice dude who makes her a mix CD. OK so maybe he’s a lameo, fine, but still. I’m rooting for him, not his whore girlfriend.

But he gets killed by a bike tire slashing his neck.

...not a typo.

Shot on gloriously awful, flat, lifeless, cheap, ugly, and lazy digital video, the film has precisely one shot that was interesting: the whore has a piece of broken mirror (the mirror breaks when she tries to escape, she hits the wall and it falls off and hits her in the head. This movie is pretty goddamn hilarious actually) up to the killer’s neck, so we get a little dual vision of his neck. But, like every other “violent” moment in the film, we see nothing except blood after the fact.

Speaking of blood, I will say the film has the most accurate title in history, as 50% is the whore riding her bike around (TRAILS!), and the other 50% is the blood (BLOOD) that sprays all over the place after a kill that we don’t really see. I dunno if they couldn’t afford prosthetics, or if the director just didn’t want to show it, but either way, if you removed the blood this would be the tamest “survival” movie ever. It’s like TV movie editing. He raises the knife, we cut to a reaction of the whore, then we cut back to a dead guy bleeding all over the place.

Back to the director: he’s terrible. The script was generic, not awful, but the direction singlehandedly ruins what little promise the film has. Shots are meant to look hand held, but they are clearly shot from a tripod with a loose handle. Zooms come out of nowhere, simple dialogue scenes have camera motion that even Michael Bay would find excessive… it’s filth.

I got this movie for free. So I want someone else’s money back.

What say you?

5 comments:

  1. Yikes, dude. I'm sure you were angry at this terrible-sounding movie, but you're much more pleasant when you're saying nice things about women (i.e., ogling them) than when you're repeatedly calling them whores.

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  2. No joke. Between all of the "whore" in this review and the "broad" in the previous one I'm wrinkling my lip a little at you, BC.

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  3. Yeah I dunno what my problem was that day. Maybe one of my friends found out his wife/GF had cheated on him or something? It is uncharacteristically mean-spirited.

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  4. This certainly was a terrible movie. Bad parts include:

    1. Sucker boyfriend getting his throat slashed by the main chain cog (it wasn't the tire, dude.) This might have worked in a movie with a comedic slant, but this movie was dead serious. I will say that the fx for his cut throat was impressive, but it constituted the only good fx in the whole film.

    2. The dude who picked the "whore" up off the dirt road had no reason to disbelieve her story. For some reason he took the side of the killer weirdly sitting in front of the fence in the road. Why the fuck did he want to see his ID so badly? He deserved that knife to the gut.

    3. When she climbs up to the cross on top of the hill to get a cell phone signal, she has a very long conversation with a 911 operator who promises that they'll have her rescued within a "couple of minutes". She doesn't even tell him the most obvious landmark. That whole conversation takes place before even one drop of blood from her crucified boyfriend gets on her lapel.

    4. Wow! So the killer crucified her boyfriends dead body. This means that he went through an enormous amount of effort just to creep her out a little? He didn't even have time to accomplish this inhuman feat. Maybe Jason could have done it, but this guy's just a regular dude. Then again, we might find out more about him in the sequel (ha, ha). Another theory is that he was the pilot of the helicopter which was supposed to be there in "a couple of minutes".

    5. How many times did the "whore" scream while she was hiding/running from the killer, thus giving away her position. Idiot!

    6. The stupid lumberjacks they encounter never speak a single word to the "whore". Not one. Why?

    7. The killer is in the middle of the road watching her drive away in the truck that she finally was able to start. Then, she decides to slowly back up in order to run him over. Ridiculous risk given that 999,999 out of 1 million killers would have simply stepped out of the way, climbed on the (slow moving) truck, smashed the window with their axe and proceeded to murder the shit out of said "whore". Instead, he stands there allowing her to run him over. Then, as she drives away, she doesn't even bother to get a visual on his dead body. It was full daylight, the road was perfectly straight. But she just drives away.

    8. The lumberjacks' truck runs out of gas half way down the hill. So, these two professional lumberjacks drive all the way up this mountain to cut some wood and don't plan well enough to have enough gas to get back home. But wait, she hears something dripping from the bottom of the truck. Okay, this must mean that the killer managed to chop a hole in the gas tank. Okay, I can buy that. Oh, wait, the axe is stuck in the bottom of the truck, but it's not dripping fuel, it's dripping blood. So, this axe has so much blood on it from the murdered lumberjacks that it can drip half down the mountain and continue so loudly that it alerts the "whore". Okay.

    9. The killer captures her and cooks her pasta. She eats it after one or two inquisitive/unsure looks. I'm sure she was famished after running around the mountain but this guy has been trying to FUCKING MURDER her for hours. She didn't even wait to see him eat first before devouring that plate.

    In the movie's defense:

    1. It doesn't look nearly as bad as you described. It doesn't look good, but it's not like "The Jackhammer Massacre".

    2. Some of the scenes in the forest were at least mildly suspenseful.

    3. The acting was passable.

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  5. I got this on DVD when I bought Saw III - they were giving it away free. I didn't make it more than half way through

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