BLOOD (2022)

Studio:     Vertical Entertainment
Director:    Brad Anderson
Writer:     Will Honley
Producer:  Gary Levinsohn, Billy Hines, Paris Kassidokostas-Latsis, Terry Dougas
Stars:     Michelle Monaghan, Skeet Ulrich, Finlay Wojtak-Hissong, June B. Wilde, Skylar Morgan Jones

Review Score:

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Summary:

A desperate mother secretly goes to extreme measures to save her young son after he develops a mysterious illness that makes him hungry for human blood.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In the midst of a contentious custody battle with her unfaithful ex-husband Patrick, recovering addict Jessica Stokes moves into a remote farmhouse with her preteen daughter Tyler and young son Owen. In nearby woods, the two children discover a mysterious tree growing out of a mud pit where a small lake used to be, and the family’s dog Pippin becomes unusually drawn toward it.

Pippin disappears one night after chasing toward something unseen in the direction of the tree. When he returns days later, the family notices the dog’s eyes glowing strangely. Suddenly, Pippin viciously mauls Owen. Jess beats the dog to death before rushing Owen to the hospital where she also works as a nurse.

Owen gradually recovers, but Jess becomes alarmed when she finds the boy sucking on a blood packet in the hospital. Jess confiscates the packet even though Owen begs her for it. When Owen’s condition suddenly worsens, however, Jess steals another blood packet that stabilizes his vital signs, but she doesn’t tell anyone about Owen’s newfound desire for blood.

Jess brings Owen back home for hospice care. To maintain her son’s health, Jess continues secretly stealing blood packets for Owen to drink. When the hospital institutes new security measures due to her ongoing theft, Jess tries feeding Owen rabbit blood, but it doesn’t heal him. Jess instead uses her own blood to continue feeding Owen, although the needle marks and drowsiness makes it look to Patrick and Tyler as though she may be undergoing a relapse.

Desperate for another way to supply Owen with blood, Jess kidnaps terminally ill cancer patient Helen Osgood since Helen doesn’t have immediate family and she previously expressed a desire to die anyway. Jess keeps Helen tied up in a locked cellar where she regularly drains her for blood.

Tyler becomes suspicious of the padlocked cellar door. Jess catches Tyler after she sneaks through a window to discover Helen held captive downstairs. To calm her daughter’s hysteria over the situation, Jess explains Owen’s condition, which convinces Tyler to keep the secret and help care for Owen.

Helen attempts to escape the cellar. Jess recaptures her and then placates two police officers who come to question Jess about Helen’s disappearance.

Helen escapes again. This time, Helen fatally wounds her neck on a barbed wire fence while fleeing into the woods. Jess realizes Owen is undergoing a terrible transformation and is becoming increasingly difficult to control when she finds him gorging on the blood from Helen’s neck.

Worried that Jess is using drugs again, and because Owen hasn’t been in school for weeks, Patrick comes to the farmhouse with Regina White from Child Protective Services. Patrick ends up taking Owen and Tyler back to his house where he lives with his new wife Candice and their infant daughter.

Tyler catches Owen preparing to feed on the baby. Believing Owen’s condition could be connected to the strange tree, Tyler sneaks Owen out of Patrick’s house to take him to the tree, which she plans to burn in hopes of breaking the apparent curse. Owen suddenly attacks his sister before she can start the fire. Jess arrives in time to pull Owen off of Tyler. Seeing that her uncontrollable son has now taken on a monstrous appearance, Jess tearfully drowns him in the mud around the tree.

Owen’s death is ruled an accident, but Patrick takes custody of Tyler by successfully filing a negligence claim against Jess. As part of restarting her life, Jess burns the tree. She also gets a new dog, but becomes concerned when she finds him staring at something unseen in the tree’s direction, just like Pippin did before his transformation.

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Review:

“Blood” takes its unoriginal tagline out of a recycling bin to ask the question, how far would a mother go to save her child?  The answer?  Exactly as far as every other desperate parent in every other mediocre movie where saving a loved one becomes a formulaic focal point.

In the midst of a contentious custody battle following an acrimonious divorce, Jessica has a hard time holding her half of a fractured family together.  While her ex-husband Patrick enjoys their formerly happy home with his new wife and new baby, Jess moves into an old, remote farmhouse with their daughter Tyler and young son Owen.  As a recovering drug addict, Jess has a lot to prove if she wants to keep the children under her questionable care.  Proving her commitment to becoming a model parent turns into a Herculean challenge when a mysterious illness suddenly befalls Owen.

Owen’s dog Pippin acquires an unusual fascination for an ominous tree in a nearby forest.  One night, the tree’s lure draws the dog to perform a disappearing act.  When he returns with glowing eyes a few days later, Pippin unexpectedly mauls Owen, forcing Jess to beat the animal to death before rushing her son to the hospital.

Owen gradually recovers from the vicious attack, but recovery comes with a newfound appetite for human blood, which is the only thing keeping him from relapsing with convulsions and physical deterioration.  Discovering her son’s disturbing thirst, and knowing no medical professional would ever treat him with what he really needs, Jess takes on the responsibility of secretly satiating Owen’s hunger by securing a steady supply of blood, no matter what she has to do to get it.

Will she be willing to steal plasma packets from the hospital where she works?  Will she start killing rabbits to see if animal blood can be a substitute?  Will she slice open her own arm to provide the supply herself?  Will she kidnap a terminally ill patient for use as a perpetual blood pump, justifying her captivity as, well, the woman was going to die anyway?

The answers, of course, are yes, yes, yes, and yes.  What else would they be when a plotline that follows a predetermined pattern of escalation traffics chiefly in routine beats that can be seen coming from 2,000 miles away?

Hyperbolic haters relish opportunities to “well, actually” that something “isn’t a horror movie.”  According to them, Jordan Peele joints aren’t really horror films, they’re socially conscious commentaries.  “Silence of the Lambs” isn’t a horror movie either, it’s a psychological thriller.  I’ve also seen the slasher “Sick” (review here) decried as “not horror” even though it features masked men murdering people in a woodland cabin.

Although argumentative semantics like those are usually only worth no more than a dismissive groan, they’d be earned in “Blood’s” case.  “Blood” puts up an outward appearance of being vaguely vampire-related, what with Owen’s particular craving and some light prosthetics applied at the end to give him a hint of monstrous transformation.

Despite this, as well as the supernatural tree whose apparent curse never receives an explanation, “Blood” can only tangentially qualify as horror in a strictly secondary sense.  Owen’s condition is merely a device to motivate his mother’s desperation.  There’s one scene of him sucking on a dead woman’s throat, but really, he just has a disease that forces Jess to test the limits of her protective instincts.  Their situation otherwise isn’t different than any Lifetime-ready MOW where a parent fights to save a son or daughter from dying.

“Blood” focuses far more on soap opera melodrama.  Less a character and more of a scripted complication to get in the woman’s way, Patrick only exists to lob angry accusations at Jess, which both of them do plenty of while arguing over a conference room table in front of their lawyers.  Tender moments sprinkle in here and there, like when piano music accompanies Jess leaning contentedly in a doorframe to smile at the siblings playing Battleship together.  Several scenes show doctors spitting out medical jargon as they deliver diagnosis after diagnosis regarding Owen’s worrying health.  In procedural drama of a different kind, Jess has to deal with unexpected visits from police officers as well as Child Protective Services.  It’s all a lot of ordinary, ho-hum hullaballoo, far too much for padding out an overlong 105-minute runtime.

But “Blood” stars Michelle Monaghan, who retains a large enough following from her work in higher-profile features that people will see this movie simply because she is in it.  “Blood” is also directed by Brad Anderson, whom horror fans cut slack for also directing the cult favorite “Session 9.”  At some point, “Session 9’s” admirers will have to accept that it isn’t a great look for its director to still be riding on popularity that is now over two decades old.  It’s a lot like PR people continuing to tout Neil Marshall as the man who made “The Descent,” never mind that his lesser movies made in the 20 years since have overextended that line of credit.

Apparently though, Monaghan and Anderson still have enough fans, or the producers have enough friends, to stuff IMDb with suspiciously glowing reviews hailing “Blood” as the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Honest people, on the other hand, will correctly tell you it’s closer to stale bread, serving up shriveled tropes and crumbs of flavorless intrigue.  What more would any reasonable person expect from a film that touts the tired tagline, “How far would you go to save your child?”

NOTE: There is a mid-credits scene.

Review Score: 45

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