Blood Child

 



Director - Jennifer Phillips
Starring - Alyx Melone (Talking Heads, O Negative), Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie (Time Rojak, Mister John), and Biden Hall (The Weather Files, The Boys)
Release Date - 2017
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "Some bonds can never be broken"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     Horror can take on many different forms.  Traditional horror preys on things that we truly fear.  For some this could be a fear of the dark, rape, bugs, animals, automobiles, and even losing an unborn child.  I've seen dozens of horror films centered around losing a child and almost all of them are approached in different manners.  A few years ago I reviewed James Cullen Bressack's Pernicious.  The film followed a group of a women who traveled out of the country and stayed in a home where a murdered child's corpse was dipped in gold and used as a shrine.  I was recently sent a film to review.  The movie, Blood Child, follows a similar story where a woman loses her unborn child in Singapore and uses the occult to raise the infant ghost.  Would this film hold up or would it fail?  You've looked at my rating so you know already!

     The film follows a young couple who has it all going for them.  They are expecting their first child, a lucrative job in Singapore, a live in maid, and great friends but one day they lose it all when she miscarries.  She goes behind her husbands back and visits someone in Singapore who uses the occult to locate the spirit of the lost child so she can secretly raise it.  They return to the states and a few years pass and they discover they are with child again.  This angers the spirit and she turns on her family in a jealous rage.

     I went into Blood Child with an open mind and expecting to see a pretty solid supernatural thriller but what I got was a family drama with supernatural elements sprinkled throughout.  The acting in this one is questionable.  The film has several scenes where the cast seems to have no direction and just goes through their dialogue with no attempt at getting into character.  Other scenes are better than others but the cast just doesn't feel invested in the film or the director was not hands on like he should have been.  The story for this one would work as a supernatural thriller if it focused less on the broken family and more on the supernatural events unfolding around them.  It took way too long to establish the husband is a piece of shit that cheats on his wife and she secretly has a ghost hiding in the house.  With that being said, I did enjoy what the story tries to establish.  As a father I couldn't imagine losing one of my children and would go to great lengths to see them again if it was an option.  Sadly, this angle is not fully explored and only briefly touched upon.  Finally, this is not a bloody or gory one.  There is no real deaths and the scares we get are very underwhelming and lackluster.  I did like the makeup on the ghost but that is the extent of the practical effects.  Overall, Blood Child was a huge disappointment.  The cast didn't feel right and the story could not establish itself as a supernatural drama or thriller.  I cannot recommend this one.