Blood Child (2017)

Blood Child (2017) (see below for preview images)

​Directed and Written by Jennifer Phillips
 
Starring: Alyx Melone, Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie, Biden Hall
 
IMDb 5.6/10                Rotten Tomatoes NO SCORE             Metacritic NO DATA

Blood Child Cast 2017

I was sent this film by Justin Cook Publications.  I was immediately interested just by looking at the few images I was sent.  So much so that I skipped watching the trailer and dove right into the movie.
 
This film was tense.  All the way through in fact.  I was captivatingly on the edge of my seat, knowing something bad was about to happen but, not sure what it would be.  The suspense is well played, in my opinion.
 
Now, I read some reviews of this film and a couple of them were, well, not glowing opinions.  They complained about the believability of the story line and the characters and blah, blah, blah.  They need to get over themselves.
 
First let me give you a VERY short rundown of our plot.
 
Ash and Bill are a young married couple living in Singapore on temporary assignment from Bill’s job. Life is good and they are happy as can be.  They live in a nice place and have a live in housekeeper named Siti.  Eventually, Ash and Bill become pregnant and are very excited to welcome their new baby into their home.  Unfortunately, one night Ash is found by Siti in the bathroom hemorrhaging and in immense pain.  Once she is taken to the hospital she is informed that she has lost the baby.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, the couple is told that it is unlikely that she will ever conceive again.  Ash is crushed and lives in a depressed, blank, almost emotionless state while Bill tries to resume normal life.  They move back to the States and bring Siti with them. That is when weird things start happening.  Horrible spells in their den, odd sounds in the house, strange happenings around the property.  What is the cause?  Can it be stopped?  Has something evil or sinister followed them home from Singapore?
 
I’m not telling you.  All I will tell you is, be careful what you wish for.
 
THE END
 
Now that I told you all that…
 
I liked this film…a lot. I thought it was a good horror/suspense film.  It was an hour and a half which, to me, is a perfect length for a horror flick. Although the acting was A-list I still feel it was at the top rung of the B-list ladder.  The dialogue flowed fairly naturally and there were few awkward moments.  (When I say “awkward moments” I am referring to those points where the timing in dialogue is just a bit off or the acting feels forced or the effects are done in a way that we know they are low budget but they tried to make it look high budget and it just didn’t work at all…that kind of stuff.)
 
I found an interesting piece of imagery that I am going to call an homage to a couple other horror movies. In this film there is a small red child’s toy ball that rolls around in the house from time to time.  It reminded me of the instances of red in “The Sixth Sense” and the red balloon everywhere in “It”.  I thought it was a great way to show a foreboding presence without doing the usual stuff with lighting or music or the actors reactions themselves. 
 
I really think they did a good job on this film.  I’m actually quite surprised it’s an indie film.  It seems to me like the kind of picture a major studio would have picked up.
 
It DOES say this film is based on true events and although names are changed to protect privacy, the events are depicted exactly how they happened.  We ALL know how I feel about that message at the start of a horror film.  I also did a cursory search for said events and I could not find anything substantial to back up that claim.  But, it’s not like I spent hours searching.  I spent five minutes.  Still, I get kind of annoyed when that claim is made with no evidence to back it up.
 
However, I still think horror fans would like this.  I do this B-rate fans will LOVE this film.  Mainstreams might feel a little “eh” about it, so be warned.
 
RATINGS
3.5/5 Stars
 

---