There will surely be worse films in the final months of 2018, but I’ll be dumbfounded if any of those terrible projects are as downright c*cky as Blood Fest. Like many horror comedies that attempt to walk a thin line between parody and earnestness, writer/director Owen Egerton‘s second feature is absolutely convinced of its own cleverness. It’s a self-referential saga of blood and guts, doing its best to deconstruct horror tropes while simultaneously using them to its narrative advantage.
But constantly pointing out what happens in horror movies is not clever. Characters repeatedly saying “This is usually when something bad happens!” is not funny. And as the cherry on top, having your heroes recognize that they’re in a horror movie is not a novel idea.
Blood Fest thinks it’s the new Cabin in the Woods. It’s really a Disney Channel movie with more CGI gore.
The World’s Biggest Horror Fest Turns Deadly
When Dax Conway (Robbie Kay) was a child, he experienced something out of a nightmare. He spent many evenings watching horror movies like Dracula with his mother (Samantha Ireland), who was a true fan of the genre. One night, a disturbed individual broke into their home, killing Dax’s mother and scarring the young boy permanently. The masked killer turned out to be a patient of Dax’s psychologist father (Tate Donovan), who fired the bullet that took down his subject. Sadly, the damage was done.
But the trauma of his past doesn’t keep Dax from watching horror movies. In fact, it enhances his love of the genre. After all, his mother told him that horror helps us become stronger than our greatest fears. That lesson lingers, and he takes it to heart. Unfortunately, his father doesn’t feel quite the same way, becoming the world’s preeminent voice against violent movies and graphic carnage. When he finds out that his son wants to attend Blood Fest, a festival celebrating all things gory and gross, he cuts up the ticket and throws it away.
Devastated by the idea of missing out on this hotly anticipated fest, Dax turns to Sam (Seychelle Gabriel) and Krill (Jacob Batalon), his two closest friends and fellow horror aficionados. With a little help from “movie star” Ashley (Barbara Dunkelman), Dax is able to get into the event of the year. But what happens inside Blood Fest? Well, nothing good, that’s for sure. It turns out that this whole thing is very real, and our unlucky protagonists will have to fight for their lives.
Meta Take On The Genre Lacks Bite
Blood Fest begins with an interesting, maybe even provocative question: why do we love horror movies so much? The film promises a psychological examination of the genre’s appeal, and characters are constantly talking about how these chillers make them feel or how they make others feel. Dax discusses them in fond terms, while his father denounces them as dangerous. Egerton establishes this potential genre dissection almost immediately, and I leaned in, hoping the film would provide something substantial and compelling.
The problem is that Blood Fest is hopelessly amused with itself; the film is utterly convinced that each twist and turn is somehow fresh and invigorating. Egerton is always calling attention to his supposedly clever tweaks to the genre’s framework, to the point that the film stops being meta and starts being annoying.
But wait, there’s another problem. The film is so obsessed with calling attention to its own subversiveness that it fails to actually be subversive. You can wink at the audience all you want, but when your movie is so blatantly predictable at each turn, you’re not going anywhere. The trappings are on full display here, even if the format is more reflexive than usual.
CGI Blood & Obnoxious Self-Awareness
After a while, the failure of the film’s self-awareness becomes downright obnoxious. Every scene seemingly features Dax exclaiming that something is about to happen, using his knowledge of the genre to survive. He usually drops the name of a major horror film in the mix for good measure, as Egerton is clearly hoping to appeal to the horror cinephiles in the audience. Eventually, the film is practically trying to wink with both eyes, shaking the viewer and screaming “DO YOU GET IT YET???”
I also think Blood Fest has a very low opinion of horror movies, which is weird coming from a movie that serves as something of a homage to the genre. At one point, the evil carnival barker of the festival, who acts like Charlie Day on ecstasy, tells an audience of bloodthirsty horror fans that the genre is dying. The movies suck today, the genre has no teeth, and so on. Those are the same arguments we’ve heard before, and they’re always wrong. So why is everyone cheering?
If it seems like an isolated scene, the film’s ultimate treatment of horror material views the genre in a reductive fashion. Everything is restricted by some kind of rule, ignoring anything that could break or reinvent those tropes. The film is more concerned with its obnoxious winks than it is with providing any semblance of unpredictability or fidelity to the actual horror genre, leaving everyone to wonder what there is to love about these movies in the first place.
Plus, Blood Fest‘s own self-professed extremity is half-baked, doused in buckets of fake gore and CGI blood. Even if it wants to be edgy and dangerous, the film wimps out.
Blood Fest: Conclusion
As the film haphazardly blends genuine stakes, extravagant gore, and incessant nudges, Egerton throws everything from serial killers to zombie pathogens at the viewer. Something’s gotta stick, right? Not necessarily. Instead of living up to its Godard and Whedon-esque aspirations, Blood Fest shoots itself in the foot, delivering cliche after cliche in a formulaic, hopelessly grating package. Even with a promising idea on the table, this teen horror hodgepodge is dead on arrival.
But it stays alive just long enough to make a horror movie reference or two.
Are you excited for Blood Fest? Are you a fan of this kind of comedic take on the horror genre? Let us know in the comments below!
Blood Fest will be released on August 31. For full international release information, click here.
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