Every online indicator seemed to point towards me not liking Bleed. Netflix thought I would give it the dreaded one-star, and it had the lowest imdb rating that I've encountered this month. And that includes Black Eyed Children: Let Me In, which is barely even a movie! And while it's true that Bleed is often a cliched mess, I kind of appreciated that mess. It's got a kitchen sink approach regarding its subgenre/plot, looks slick, and is pretty gory without ever really going over the top. I *get* the one-star reviews, but I don't agree with them.
My synopsis: Pregnant couple Sarah and Matt buy a new house in a small southern town, but Sarah's moon-shaped birthmark leaves the already strange townfolk acting even stranger. Her free-spirited brother unexpectedly shows up and talks Matt and their friends into a little ghost hunting excursion to the nearby burned down prison. All heck breaks loose, including, but not limited to: serial killers, a backwoods cult, and the cannibal ghost of Rob Zombie. (Not actually Rob Zombie, but a good Dragula cosplayer.) Will they all... Bleed?
Elaborate Genre: Ghost-hunting, cult, crazy small town, pregnant-woman-in-peril supernatural thriller.
Overall: Not "good" but strangely watchable once you make it through a pretty stagnant first half-hour.
So, the pros: mostly, Bleed just has a good look. It's not particularly well shot or anything (it's serviceable), but the set design/evil props/whatever look cool. And the main set (the burned out prison) is solid, with lots of graffiti and crusty shit everywhere. I'd guess it's a real location and not a set, and the State of Georgia (where this was filmed) is leaving money on the table if they don't do some sort of haunted house attraction there each October. You hear (pretentious?) filmmakers talk about a set being a character in a film, and that's kind of the case here. Bleed wouldn't be nearly as watchable if it wasn't for the eerie quality wrung out of this husk of a building.
There's also a pretty decent mean-streak to the film. After all - child murdering and pregnant woman harassing are main plot points. But it's never *too* mean - Bleed, to me, struck that nice balance that might make you go "yikes" but never actually makes you feel bad. Maybe that's symptomatic of not caring about the characters - the best you can say about them is that they are, on the whole, less annoying than most horror movie protagonists. Is the mean-streak earned? Eh... but it might be one of the meaner "fun" type flicks I've seen. Maybe it's the high-gore:low body count ratio? You don't actually see a lot of the bad/gory stuff happen, but the after effects (especially the cultish "decorations") are nasty/fun.
And what's bad? Again, you don't actually care for the characters, and this is one of the few movies that (marginally) succeeds in spite of that. But there's no doubt that it could be better. Story-wise, the whole thing kind of falls apart if you think about it for too long, and some of the plot quirks are pretty nonsensical. But I could easily sweep that under the rug - the mishmash of stuff going on kept me occupied enough that I couldn't really dwell on the things I didn't like.
But one thing that was not going under the rug, no matter how hard you tried, was the music/score. There's just too much numetal/rockish stuff going on that undercuts a lot of the more suspenseful moments in the film. A less guitar-driven score might have done wonders for the chase scenes - even a chinzty synth score would be an improvement over what we get here. And some of the musical cues are just too on the nose... a lighter touch in the music department would have really helped things here.
But I don't know - maybe making marked improvements would have upped Bleed into "disappointing" or "missed opportunity" territory. As it stands, I'm okay with my low expectations helping the film into "pleasant surprise." It's kind of a mess, but I had fun with it.
I would cautiously recommend this film.
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