BLOOD SHINE REVIEW

There are so many independent, low-budget horror films being made by novice filmmakers released every year that I tend to be rather wary about which ones I take the time to watch. One thing going for Blood Shine, the second feature from New York couple Emily Bennett and Justin Brooks, was seeing Larry Fessenden’s name in the credits. Although he wasn’t involved as a producer, just considering him the patriarch of New York indie horror, just knowing he appears in the movie as an actor immediately raises my interest.

We’re introduced to Fessenden’s character almost immediately, as he appears on video as some sort of cult leader preaching to his followers. We then meet Keith (Brendan Sexton III), an ex-con who has just been fired from a farming job. When his truck breaks down in the middle of nowhere, he ends up at the home of Emily Bennett’s Clara, who lives alone, but she offers a warm and friendly welcome that Keith misconstrues as something more.

This prologue is a bit of a misdirect, since it then cuts to horror filmmaker Brighton West (David Call), who is under pressure to write the fourth installment of his popular Craven horror movie series. To do so, he travels to upstate New York to write the screenplay. We already know Brighton is a pig, from watching the way he auditions an eager ingenue for his next movie. Once upstate, he spies a woman bathing nude in a lake. He’s suddenly knocked out, and when he comes to, he’s locked in an attic, by the same Clara we saw earlier.

To be honest, we’ve seen this sort of thriller before, whether it’s Misery or any other cult-related thriller or horror movie, so Blood Shine is already working at a loss, since it has to offer something unique. Considering that the filmmakers are New York-based, I was a little surprised to see how rural this film became, almost from the start, with most of it taking place in and around that one house. The majority of the film involves Brighton imprisoned in Clara’s attic, as she begins to inure him into the idea of slicing himself in order to release himself from the “prison” that is his own body. Other scenes show Clara dancing gracefully out in the sunshine, because we learn later she worships light while also being afraid of the dark, for reasons that will only be hinted at later.

The big problem is that it’s never quite clear how West got himself into his mess. As he keeps mentioning, people do know he’s gone upstate, and he’s getting a lot of pressure to turn in a screenplay to the studio. It’s also a little odd that someone in town would direct him to Clara, so obviously, this cult has people in town who are helping them to recruit members. When Brighton arrives, there’s a strange woman standing outside the window of his rental house, making one think Blood Shine might be one of those “townies not liking outsiders” type movies, so when it becomes more about him and Clara, it feels like a lost opportunity. This isn’t as much about a “death cult,” since we don’t see others until the very end.

Bennett and Call are both decent enough actors to keep the viewer invested, although the movie tends to drag, as it sets things up in such a slow way with only passable dialogue. I never fully understood what we were supposed to be getting out of this relationship, even if Clara is clearly part of this cult finding people who are lost (either figuratively or literally) to convince them to draw their own blood. The film goes on like this, just between the two of them, for quite some time, until it leads to what should have been a far more climactic ending.

For all the interesting ideas set up by Blood Shine, this mostly two-handed thriller never fully delivers on those ideas, leading to a disappointing ending after such a tedious build-up.

Rating: 6/10

Blood Shine will be released by Dark Sky Films in select theaters, including New York’s Cinema Village (with Fessenden moderating QnAs with the filmmakers on Friday and Saturday), as well as on digital platforms starting August 21.