A group of friends are out in the forest at night and with them are also Travis and his mute and a little retarded brother Henry. Suddenly Henry gets freaky and kills almost everyone and disappears. At least this is what it seems like. Travis later on tries to start a new life again but soon memories comes back to haunt him. He doesn't know what's real or what's just fantasy and maybe he had something to do with the massacre too?
Always being worried when turning on a Lions Gate release, so was the case even this time. Bloodline is a low-budget dtv flick and I had no expectations whatsoever before I watched it. I hadn't read or heard anything about it so that actually felt pretty good, going in totally neutral.
One could break Bloodline down into three parts:
The first 15 or 20 minutes is your typical slasher flick, only a bit lamer and not very effective.
Second part's being just drama. It's low-budget with not that good of actors and you think your in for a horror flick to begin with so that's not a nice discovery. After a little time you get used to the drama but it's quite boring and uninteresting. This is also the longest part of the movie and it even feels longer than it is. This is for sure where a lot of people will probably turn the movie off.
Third part is the best part. By now you've definitely realized that it's not a slasher flick or a genuine horror flick for that matter. It's more like a thriller, well a psychological thriller. Some more things start to happen and you've gotten somewhat into the story, since watching the drama part. Here we also get threated to a couple of scares, but they are really cheap and not that effective. But at least something's finally happening.
The actual story is kinda hard to explain without spoiling the movie. Let's just say that nothing's what it seems. In the end there are some twists that turn the movie around but that also's gonna confuse a lot of people. It's just too much in the end and when the credits roll, you're not even close to being satisfied.
About the bad actors. It's hard to take most of them seriously as so often's the case with low-budget productions. At least all of them tries and no one is really horrible or even remotely close to that, some are just hard to believe. But the guy who plays Travis (Clay Adams), one of the brothers, delivers a really good performance that he definitely deserves some credit for.
Bloodline has been quite poorly shot at times and looks really cheap. Also the middle part drags the movie down a lot. Once it gets going it's actually kinda ok and somewhat interesting but unfortunately it does not really deliver in the end. The gore is minimal, don't expect anything in that department.
I won't say that it's complete trash, but it's very far from good. At least you can tell that they've tried and that should count for something. But in the end, I can't really recommend it.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2004
DIRECTOR: Keith Coulouris, David Schrader
WRITING CREDITS: Keith Coulouris, David Schrader
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Clay Adams, Aimee Barth, Bryan Smithson
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 96 min
RATING: 3/10
Bloodline Website/IMDB Click here
Bloodline Trailer Click here
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