AARON'S BLOOD (2016)

Studio:       Gravitas Ventures
Director:    Tommy Stovall
Writer:       Tommy Stovall
Producer:  Marc Sterling, Tommy Stovall
Stars:     James Martinez, Trevor Stovall, Farah White, David Castellvi, Michael Peach, Laurie Seymour, Noah Heekin, Luke Barnett, Michael Lopez, Michael Chieffo

Review Score:

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Summary:

A desperate father fights to save his hemophiliac son from succumbing to vampirism after a mysterious blood transfusion.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Aaron Diaz is summoned to the hospital after school bully Justin injures Aaron’s hemophiliac son Tate, triggering a hemorrhage that requires a blood transfusion. Aaron is briefly joined by his sister Karen and also receives counsel from hospital chaplain Father Kane.

Shortly after his release, Tate begins developing the athletic strengths and sunlight weaknesses of a vampire. School custodian Mike observes an incident in which Tate raises Justin by the throat with one hand.

Recognizing the boy’s affliction, Mike plots with tavern owner and covert vampire hunter Earl to destroy Tate. Aaron catches both men in the act of preparing to behead Tate with an ax after they break into his house. Tate suddenly leaps across his bedroom and kills Mike by draining the blood from his throat. Earl leaves Aaron with the ax and tells him he will have to decapitate both Mike and Tate. To prove to himself and to his father that he has indeed become undead, Tate shoots himself with Mike’s gun and survives unharmed.

Aaron takes Tate to stay with Karen while he investigates further. Aaron returns home, hesitates with decapitating Mike, and ultimately buries the man’s body in the woods. Aaron also has another nightmare involving Tate and briefly meets with Earl to ask about possibly reversing vampirism.

Aaron traces Tate’s transfusion to blood donor Abigail Dasher. At gunpoint, Aaron confronts Abigail in her home and forces her to cut herself. When Aaron realizes Abigail is human, he apologizes before hurriedly driving away. Abigail snaps a photo of Aaron’s car and contacts police.

Aaron recalls hospital chaplain Father Kane being alone with Tate. Aaron tracks down the priest and discovers Kane is the vampire who turned Tate. Father Kane explains that he merely wished to save Tate’s life so that Aaron would not lose his son. Aaron then contacts Earl for direction on what to do next.

Aaron visits Tate at Karen’s house. Tate admits that his bloodlust is growing. Aaron drains his own blood into a glass so that Tate can feed.

Meanwhile, Father Kane drains the blood of a dying hospital patient after administering Last Rites.

Aaron returns to Father Kane to learn more about vampirism. As the two men pray together, Earl enters unexpectedly and quickly beheads the priest. Earl and Aaron collect Kane’s blood.

Karen panics when she discovers Tate disappeared. Tate terrorizes Justin from outside his window, but ultimately returns to Karen’s house without harming the bully.

Officers Lopez and Vaughn detain Aaron outside his house over the incident with Abigail Dasher. Earl restrains both policemen at gunpoint so that Aaron can rush over to Karen’s.

Tate tells Aaron that he couldn’t kill Justin. Tate tells his father that he wants to die and asks Aaron to kill him. Instead, Aaron creates a concoction according to Earl’s specifications using Kane’s blood and sulfur. Tate drinks it.

Because Aaron was unable to go through with the decapitation, Mike resurrects as a vampire and kills Officer Lopez. Earl decapitates Mike with a machete before Mike can kill Vaughn.

Tate goes into violent convulsions as his skin transforms. After Tate settles down, Aaron sits with the boy as he gradually reverts back to human form.

Earl calls Aaron to tell him that the cops will no longer question him. In the background, Officer Vaughn helps Earl bury the beheaded bodies of Mike and Officer Lopez.

Back at Karen’s house, Tate walks outside and steps safely into the sunlight.

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Review:

How far is one desperate father willing to go to save his sick son?  That’s the question pumping “Aaron’s Blood,” a reserved, down-to-earth take on vampire mythos where human drama takes center stage and the inhuman element lingers in the wings.

When a bullying incident at school leaves hemophiliac Tate hemorrhaging blood at a worrying rate, a timely transfusion seemingly saves the day.  Tate returns home with his attentive father Aaron only for the duo to discover one set of problems has been traded for another.  Although Tate has newfound athletic strength, he also now has an aversion to sunlight and a growing thirst to drink human blood.

Impossibly, all signs point to vampirism.  Aaron is disbelieving until a shocking incident at home introduces him to a hunter of the undead who is sympathetic to Aaron’s parental plight.  Racing against the clock as his son slowly transforms, Aaron unspools the mystery of what happened to Tate while exploring every option he can to bring back the boy he loves.

Anyone unwilling to grade on a forgiving indie curve will have a tough time getting invested in the film’s fiction.  Even though it gives all the effort its microbudget can afford, “Aaron’s Blood” unavoidably sports the warts of a shoestring production threading the eyelet of a narrow schedule.

Technical drawbacks start with lackluster lighting.  In addition to some of the dimmest rooms any hospital has ever seen, scenery is often bathed in black due to insufficient resources, or overreliance on unavailable natural light, as opposed to purely conscious aesthetic choices.  Actors usually receive a backlight, which is only sometimes complemented by a key.  But rarely is someone seen with appropriate fill, much less all three common light points concurrently.

Audio is similarly dogged by low-budget limitations.  Dialogue can occasionally be heard echoing off a table before bouncing back to a microphone, or blowing out into distortion when someone shouts too loudly.

Iffy acting sees inconsistencies too.  As father figure Aaron, some of James Martinez’s scenes play out with natural emotion while others are stiff as a corpse.  Martinez has many credits to his name, making this a probable case of relatively green director Tommy Stovall not having tuning time for retakes to pull requisite passion from performances.

Tommy Stovall takes another hit by casting his son Trevor Stovall as Tate.  The elder Stovall is undoubtedly too close to the case to see how the young actor focuses on mechanically reciting lines instead of organically embodying a character.  Their father-son battery is central to the story, yet Martinez and Stovall’s scenes together can come across with little more life than a half-speed rehearsal.

“Aaron’s Blood” has so much patience that even a breezy 76 minutes without credits gets caught up in filler of driving from one place to the next, knocking on doors, or other silent scenes not soon to quicken an audience’s pulse.  Some of the structure is clunky.  Tate is strangely confined to his aunt’s house for a prime portion of time while Aaron tends to investigative duties and body burial.  As much as such a move is at odds with developing the parent-child dynamic, pacing oddly improves since Tate’s solo scenes have a hard time holding their weight.

This laundry list of dings doesn’t fully debilitate the film, because its script slips honest heart into quiet horror.  With melodrama emphasized over action, more important marks met by the movie have to do with overall effective delivery of story and theme.  “Aaron’s Blood” is unusual among vampire yarns in that it isn’t overly interested in mythology or excessive fang-flinging carnage.  Tate’s condition is a frame to tell a personal tale of a put-upon family man and the bond fatherhood brings.

Look past the bare spots in atmosphere and acting and one can see deeper meaning aching to be acknowledged.  “Aaron’s Blood” has neither the scope some might want nor the power to trade punches with its vampire-premised peers.  But beating beneath is earnest intent that makes it successful under other standards as a small-scale dramatic thriller.

Review Score:  65

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