BLOOD BROTHERS (THE DIVINE TRAGEDIES) (2015)

Studio:       Uncork'd Entertainment
Director:    Jose Prendes
Writer:       Jose Prendes
Producer:  Jon Kondelik, James Kondelik
Stars:     Graham Denman, Jon Kondelik, Hannah Levien, Sean Whalen, Ken Foree, Barbara Crampton

Review Score:

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Summary:

Two sociopathic half-brothers discover their true identities after exploring a shared urge to commit the perfect murder.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Half-brothers Charles Brubaker and Thomas LoBianco torture drug addict Doug by falsely promising cocaine in exchange for Doug mutilating his own hand with a rock. Later, Charles tends to his and Thomas’ bedridden mother, who disapproves of Thomas, by keeping her supplied with wine.

The brothers eat at a café where they meet waitress Genevieve Dubois who has a young daughter named Maddie. Thomas fantasizes about murdering Genevieve while Charles takes a romantic interest in her.

Interested in exploring their urge to kill someone together, Thomas and Charles plot to kill a hooker. They pick up a prostitute named Vanity and take her to a motel. After fantasizing about having sex with Vanity’s severed head, Thomas forces Charles to leave with him immediately, insisting that Vanity is not the one they should kill because she is not pure.

Back at home, Thomas grows continually resentful of Charles’ closeness to their mother. Charles returns to the café alone to see Genevieve. They go on a movie date together, but Thomas secretly stalks the couple. During a tense confrontation in the theater lobby, Thomas coerces Genevieve into going back to the brothers’ house for dinner.

Thomas tries convincing Charles that Genevieve is the perfect person to murder. Charles is initially reluctant, but comes to believe that the glow he sees around Genevieve reflects his brother’s intuition. Charles hesitantly agrees to kill her.

In the kitchen, Genevieve realizes Thomas’ murderous intentions and knocks him to the floor. Charles smashes a bottle over her head in response and Genevieve stumbles outside. Charles follows Genevieve and beats her to death with a rock. Thomas suddenly has a change of heart as he vomits at the grisly sight while Charles becomes carried away with the violence.

Detective Homer Gaul is assigned to investigate the murder and interviews the brothers while they dine at the café again. Concerned they will be caught, Thomas researches Homer’s reputation and discovers he reportedly possesses psychic intuition. Homer visits Genevieve’s daughter Maddie and sees a flashback memory of the brothers’ previous visit to the café when he shakes the little girl’s hand.

Anxious to kill again, Charles comes close to strangling a rude movie theater patron, but is interrupted by an usher. Charles decides to return to Vanity and kill her instead. Thomas stays home where he is tormented by visions of Genevieve that cause him to mutilate his flesh. At the motel, Vanity fights back against Charles and escapes.

After communicating with Genevieve’s corpse, Homer comes to the house to interview Thomas. Homer sees that the butterfly tattoo carved from Genevieve’s neck flesh is framed on the living room wall as a memento cherished by Charles without Thomas’ knowledge. Homer prepares to make an arrest as Thomas is about to confess when Mother suddenly shoots Homer in his stomach.

Returning to her bed, Mother admits to Thomas that she murdered his and Charles’ fathers. As Mother continues berating and emasculating her son, Thomas' rage grows to the point where he finally pulls out a gun and shoots her.

Following his encounter with Vanity, Charles murders an entire theater of movie patrons using a hammer. He comes home to find Mother dead at Thomas’ hand. The subsequent confrontation between the two brothers ends when Charles shoots Thomas before Thomas can phone the police to turn them in. Cradling his dying brother, Charles discovers Thomas was wearing a wire that recorded his incriminating statements. With police sirens approaching, Charles attempts escape, but realizes he forgot his keys once he is in the car. Charles has a nervous breakdown inside the vehicle. Homer then suddenly taps his badge on the window and says, “you can come back to reality now.”

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Review:

NOTE: "Blood Brothers" was previously titled "The Divine Tragedies."

There is a scene in “Blood Brothers,” a simultaneously tranquilized and hyper-stylized thriller about two brothers flirting with homicidal tendencies, where one brother smugly challenges the other to expand his simplistic assessment of a film being “just okay” into eloquently thoughtful criticism.  Through tense teeth, the other brother instead finalizes the conversation with his terse reiteration, “some films are only okay.”  “Blood Brothers” practically dares critics to swipe at that silver platter and I’m accepting.  If ever a movie wrote its own review with a single line of dialogue…

Well-to-do half-brothers Thomas and Charles had different fathers, but they do have their drunk Bette Davis of a bedridden mother in common.  Something else shared by the affluent duo is a burgeoning urge to leap from sociopathic snobbery to cold-blooded killing.  For the well-mannered and well-manicured siblings, there is no better proof of entitled elitist intelligence than pulling off the perfect murder.

An average street hooker won’t do, of course.  Charles and Thomas’ target must be pure and meaningful.  Charles chills his feet when Thomas chooses a local waitress to take their blade, as he has romantic eyes for the glowing young beauty.  Once the deed is done however, the brothers swap mindsets and a monster is unleashed.  With a psychic detective biting their tails, and one brother suddenly entertaining second thoughts, this ill-conceived crime might not have a chance to morph into a spree.

Loosely reimagining the true crime tale of Leopold and Loeb, writer/director Jose Prendes tackles tone with the commitment of a precocious toddler, dropping toys to the ground on sudden whims of disinterest and wobbling willy-nilly towards whatever glimmer catches the eye next.  “Blood Brothers” ends up with a Jackson Pollock approach to blending genres, allowing splatters of disparate styles to drip, dribble, and overlap without ever fusing into premeditated cohesion.

Much of the movie is intentionally overdramatic.  As the brothers, Jon Kondelik brings to mind a slimmer Dan Stevens while Graham Denman makes for a fuller George McFly.  Playing parodies of prep school yuppies, their initial characterizations recite dialogue like Shakespeare by way of “South Park,” making for gratingly phony caricatures of already patience-testing personas.

A sharp turn is taken after the first murder, though.  This is when “Blood Brothers” strikes a match at the far end of its macabre John Waters tunnel with Kondelik and Denman swapping personalities, and being better off for it.  The duo does well with the shift from exaggerated theatrics to strict seriousness and for a moment, the film starts a climb towards more grounded portrayals with relatable repercussions.

But the movie can’t sit still there, either.  “Blood Brothers” also aims to be funny when it wants, though those moments are often inconsistent, and don’t always read as intentional.

One way the movie threads the right needle between dire stakes and dark humor is with an outstanding Ken Foree supporting performance as a gumshoe with ESP to match his hard-boiled instincts.  Relishing quirky lines such as, “like cinnamon and Jesus had a baby!” to praise good coffee, Foree preens like a Cheshire cat calmly taking its time before pouncing on a trapped rat.  Foree eats up every inch of the screen, repeatedly dunking his character into a tub of personality, and swallowing scenes in single gulps before digesting them just as fast.

The film’s other genre vet, Barbara Crampton, has less space to shine in a role somehow managing to make the actress underused and overused concurrently.  Underused in that she is put on her feet for only one moment while confined under a wig and bedcovers for the rest.  Overused in that those scenes of her sipping wine while lying prone resurface regularly to the point of tedium.

“Blood Brothers” is weird.  Not weird in a way that makes it Lynchian or Burton-esque, but weird for being unable to decide what kind of movie it wants to be.  Lighting and cinematography run the gamut from textbook three-point to unmotivated party gels to a jarring “Natural Born Killers” rear projection used for driving shots.  The movie attempts to disguise its low budget by using such cost-cutters as style surrogates, but the look doesn’t always deliver the intended effect, such as poor digital blood spray on a stationary corpse restlessly jumping while the camera dollies.

There is a good deal of good content in “Blood Brothers,” but that material is scattered across 98 minutes that don’t hold up as a singularly sensible style exercise.  Watching the film, I was never able to decide if it would work better as a straight crime drama, black comedy, or dreamlike arthouse experiment.  The movie can’t make up its mind either, so it grasps at all options and then some.  With too scatterbrained of a vision driving its direction, perhaps this idea required more time in the conceptual over before rolling camera on uncertain intent.

Review Score:  55

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