Blood Feast (2016)

Blood Feast review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

How the times have changed. Horror has evolved to such a degree that there’s more diverse frights to be had to hopefully shake the simplistic generalization of the days of video nasties and gore-porn. Blood Feast is a throwback of sorts to the era when all you needed was some quality kills and some nasty gore to call it a day with a decent horror production. The film even begins with the echoing narration of offering warnings for what you’re about to see being too shocking, harkening to the 1960s shock horror. It’s also a bit silly considering this plays over gruesome scenes of torture to start off the picture.

The film stumbles its way through washed out lighting and titled camera angles to hobble towards its gory money shots. Robert Rusler plays a husband and father that is struggling to keep his diner afloat in France. Yes, an American diner trying to survive in France somehow not making enough to pay the bills. Yet everyone seems to speak perfect English so one would think business would be a little easier. Anyway, Rusler is under a lot of stress with his medical issues and trying to find enough cash to put his daughter through college. To make ends meet, he takes the night shift as a security guard at an Egyptian museum.

While being bored at the museum, he is haunted by the spirit of Egyptian goddess Ishtar (Sadie Katz). She appears in a laughable costume of amid smoke and uses her sexual wilds to entice Robert to supply her with blood and bodies for her rituals. And since Robert doesn’t seem to have much else going on, yeah, why not? His life seems to be going to hell so he figures he might as well slap on a silly Egyptian mask and go around slicing up youths slasher style.

While the tale of Robert and his family is a bland one, made all the blander from flat and off cinematography, I have to admit that by the time the film goes full on gore mode, it delivers what it promises in terms of the gruesome and the shocking. Robert, despite looking goofy in his ancient Egyptian disguise, makes some good kills of slashing necks, gutting stomachs, and slicing off body parts. It’s all shot rather well within shadows that allow the blood to seep in through the darkness. I even dug the third act where Robert not only fully embraces his insanity but attempts to bring his family into the fold.

If Blood Beast had spent a little more time making compelling characters or a believable depiction of France, perhaps it could make for a great horror movie. Had it trimmed down its bloated scenes of dread and boredom, including shot after shot of Robert looking bored at the museum, it could’ve been a solid episode of a horror anthology. But as it stands, this new take on Blood Feasts showcases how we’ve come a long ways in terms of bloody visual effects but that troubled tales more favoring of kills than characters still exist and hinder.