Book of Blood (2008)

Genre: Horror/Absolute Garbage
Directed by John Harrison
Written by John Harrison & Darin Silverman
Based on short stories by Clive Barker
English

/5


(Watch the Trailer Here)

The Deal...
Mary Florescu is a clairvoyant. Since she was only a child, she has had visions of the other world: strange, tortured children and fountains spewing blood. She has made a living investigating paranormal happenings and writing best-selling novels about her experiences with the supernatural. When she decides to take on a teaching position at an out-of-town collegiate, a colleague reveals the existence of a local haunted house that is rumoured to have been the site of several grisly murders. With the help of tech-savvy skeptic Reg, Mary moves into the house, determined to uncover the secrets of its past and write another popular novel. Along the way, Mary recruits student Simon; a troubled young psychic that, at the age of 9, foresaw his older brother's untimely death. Little does the group know that the house is an "intersection:" a place where highways of the dead meet and spill over into our world. The dead are determined to have their stories told and not to fade away into obscurity, and they have chosen Simon as their "book:" a Book of Blood.



Did Wrongs:

Everything.

The preview looks spectacular, it's boasted as being "from the legendary mind of horror writer Clive Barker;" I had a feeling I was about to witness something so totally awesome that I'd be shouting about its rare, virtually unattainable awesomeness for years to come.... but that didn't happen. This movie is horrible. It's insanely hard for me to pinpoint exactly what John Harrison, cast, crew, and everyone involved "did wrong" (Everything,) but I promise I will try.

The characters' personalities, for one, were obscure, if even existent. There was no human predictability, they were not even close to personable, they had no quirks or tendencies. One second, Simon is a sweet young man... the next second he is completely diabolical. One second, Mary is a mentor... the next she is a treacherous and unfeeling. It seems that they just adapted to meet the needs of the story, instead of vice-versa, which would have been normal. Needless to say, it is very hard to care a smidgen about any of them, let alone want to watch an entire two hour movie about them. I just ended up hating them, and in turn hating John Harrison and Co for wasting so much of my precious life.

What bothered me most about the portrayal of the "characters" in Book of Blood was the supposed love interest between 50-something year old teacher Mary and 20-something year old student Simon. Either John Harrison and whatever dimwit was casting have horrible taste in women, or they for some reason actually believed that their audience would buy that a somewhat attractive young man could fall for a not even marginally attractive older woman. Yeah, okay. Every time they were affectionate with each other, I waited for a dream sequence to end. It never did.

The ghosts, when finally shown, looked absolutely ridiculous. Every spirit in this movie is dressed in medieval clothing and looks like they have taken a shotgun to the face... except (conveniently!) for the characters that are murdered in the movie. Apparently, John Harrison is unaware that people have continued to die after 1800, nor that people pass away of such things as heart failure, aging, suffocation, cancer, liver failure, punctured lungs, food poisoning etc etc etc etc etc... that do not leave the face or body horribly disfigured.

The only compelling dialogue in the movie, and incidentally the one that made the preview so interesting ("...the dead have highways, these highways lead to intersections that spill over into our world. If you find yourself at one of these intersections, you should stop and you should listen because the dead have stories to tell" or something to that effect) was repeated at least four times throughout the movie, in entirety. This was just unnecessary. It's as if the writers knew that they only had one decent snippet of material and were determined to suck it of all its remaining life. It was complete overkill, and a shame.

Finally, the ending didn't make any sense to me, and by the "ending," I mean the death of [expletive to prevent spoilage] about four or five minutes before the credits. Why did that happen? Why did he die? Is the brilliance of Clive Barker so far beyond my mortal intellect? If you have the answer to any of these question, then please, for the love of god, email me with them. I'd really like to know.

This movie was just generally bad. The plot, was bad, the ending was bad. Just...bad.

Did Rights:
This movie had potential, which makes it even worse than it actually is (if possible). The idea of the "Book of Blood" and the "intersection" could have been manipulated into a great ghost story, and the catch-line(/catch-paragraph?) of the film is very, very well-composed. Hey, it actually made me want to watch it.

The opening sequence of the movie (first five to ten minutes) is well done. The intro makes the movie look promising. Unfortunately, this was not the case.

Aside from the intro, there is but a single scene in "Book of Blood" that I found compelling, in which the ghost of a deceased character looks down on his lifeless body from the other world and then moves on. Incidentally, the scene is about 30 seconds long. Figures.
One thing this movie definitely did right: go straight to DVD.

Completely and Utterly Beheaded.