The movie Bloodline Killer takes place on Halloween Eve when Connor’s father dies at the hands of the masked serial killer, Skeleton. As performed by James Gaudies, Mid Century, and The Ghost and the Whale, Connor sees Skeleton (Adam Shipley, The Many Saints of Newark, The Family Fang) murder his father. He attempts to rescue his dad, but he is unsuccessful; it is Conner’s mother who eventually stops the killer by shooting them. Her shots land on the target, but the killer’s focus vanishes as she turns away.
Further, Connor and Michael (Drew Marlein, Nando Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, South of Hell ) barely recognize each other at the hospital after almost coming to blows on the grounds of Michael’s accusation of Sean seeking out their father. Cypher (Tyrese Gibson, Squealer, Fast X) is a detective along with his partner Detective Fink (Koresh Novakovic, Midnight Hustle, The Night Never Sleeps) who learn that the mother of the two has also been interviewed at the hospital and it is a policeman who takes her interview. Also, we learn that Skeleton is Moira’s cousin.
Now, fast forward to the future where the movie’s time frame has changed. Samantha, the killer’s sister, detects him and injects him with a drug to take him to their home and heal his injuries as she declares herself as a nurse. That part is disturbing.” A year passes after the events of the last film, what do you think happens?”
Ante Novakovic, the director of Sanctioning Evil American Fright Fest, along with actors and writers James and Anthony Gaudies who previously wrote for Medium and co directed The Ghost and the Whale, left me with more questions than answers regarding the film in its early stages. Unfortunately, the questions were somewhat like “What’s Moira doing in the hospital and why is her arm broken?” types.
And this is the extent of the mystery that Bloodline Killer offers. With many audiences expecting a long build up, the script pretty much resolves everything very quickly. At the thirty five minute mark, Mora visits her therapist Dr. Lucien Bruce Dern The ‘Burbs, Butch Cassidy And The Wild Bunch where you can begin piecing everything together, and there are no surprises left in a movie which has one hour and ten minutes remaining.
As if that wasn’t enough, the plot simply carries on as if there was still a puzzle to be solved. Understood, we have an idea of the killer’s identity and the intent behind his animus toward Moira and her kin, so why does Bloodline Killer attempt to throw us off the scent? Because in this depiction the filmmakers seem to think we are all too stupid to follow what has been witnessed.
‘Lee’ uses way too much time trying to calm down Connor who has locked himself up in his room acting wild and crazy while his brother (Montana Gillis from The Vatican Tapes and American Fighter) attempts to reunite with his ex wife before Lee embarks on a long and quite bloodless rampage episode whereby it is Lee himself who is doing all the killing. Moira however is not entirely out of the loop and goes into shock her ex husband is acquitted after some blindsided cops recover his body, however the authorities are of course not inclined to believe her. Last year, some jokers kept reassuring people he had to have been shot by her bullets and was dead.
If all this seems similar to launching a new franchise similar to Halloween, we agree with your assessment. And of course, there are worse models to copy about creating a slasher. Such baseness has never and will never succeed, cheap tricks for slasher fans will only create a longing to go back to the much better Busto Rhymes fighting Michael Myers in Halloween Resurrection.
While an hour and forty five minutes isn’t the longest film to sit through, it can feel like an eternity when the movie in question is as dull and predictable as Bloodline Killer. There is scarcely a faint hint of a plot twist or an unexpected scare, which means the film drags on for no reason. And even the fight scene during the climax, the fight with Lee, is so badly lit that it is as though watching darkness try to beat up some other darkness and failing.
Initially, I believed Bloodline Killer would be a reasonable contender of the slasher sub genre, but the film turned out to be an abomination that managed to be obnoxious on so many levels. The good news is that there are no expectations for any sequels much less a possibility of it turn into an obnoxious franchise.
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