Blooded and Out to Thrill No One: A Movie Review

Director: Edward Boase.

Writer: James Walker.

Blooded is a faux documentary styled thriller in the vein of The Blair Witch Project, Atrocious and others. This title was released exclusively in the United Kingdom with first time feature filmmaker Edward Boase at the helm. Blooded covers fox hunting in England, which is still one part tradition and another part controversy. The silly scripted interviews break up much of the tension in the reenacted central story line. And, sadly, this film is not even brave enough to pick a side in the controversy.

Five friends head up to the Isle of Mull to get away from it all. Lucas (Nick Ashdon, Neil McDermott), the protagonist, is a fox hunter and an advocate for this sport. He has his eye on Liv (Cicely Tennant, Isabella Calthorpe) for marriage, but he also has some hounds nipping at his heels. The local anti-hunting league has followed Lucas to his 5000 acre abode and now the tables are turned, as the hunter becomes the hunted. The next thirty minutes involves a whole lot of gun toting, self-righteous blather that is not set up and pseudo tension which dissipates quickly.

And really this film does not even fill the required ninety minute mark at seventy-seven measly minutes. As well, the scripted interviews shows viewers which characters survive and which characters are too humbled by their human hunting experience to talk on camera. Also, the interviews break up the main story and any sense of movie making illusion is broken up by one of the actors reading off of a script in a movie studio somewhere. The climax involves lots of self-righteous bull&*%$ with the protagonist endangering his friend's lives for the sake of hunting foxes. Surely, humanity and friendship are more important than hunting a varmint in a ridiculous red tuxedo.

Blooded is a very average thriller that tries too hard not to make waves on the debate of legal foxhunting. Focused on the sensational elements of this topic, writer James Walker creates an interesting backstory for the fictional elements in the film; however, the flow of the film is consistently broken up by the film's mockumentary style. There are a few tense moments in the film, but the viewer knows how the film will end and therefore, much of the mystery is removed to the film's detriment. Skip this early film from Boase in favour of many other exceptional United Kingdom based films e.g. Heartless, Attack the Block and others.

Overall: 6.5 out of 10 (very little tension, its presence is like a whimper, characters are shallow).

*blooded is a term that describes a hunter's initiation into the culture, which involves the paining of the hunter's face in the fallen buck's blood.

A second review of this title is available at What Culture (Matt Conn):

Blooded at What Culture

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Posted in: 2011,2011 release,documentary,movie poster,movie review,terror,terrorist,united kingdom