Being that he's still in his early teens, Sam (David Daniel) sure could have an easier life: He's still suffering from losing his mother (Lisa Wilcox) in an accident and doesn't really get along with his stepmom Kim (Tuesday Knight), his older brother Michael's (Sam Hadden) a bit of an asshole, his pre-school sister Amy (Olivia Sanders) is constantly getting on his nerves, and at school he's constantly bullied for being on the dorky side of things. And then, on the day of the anniversary of his mum's death, Sam's dad (Jeremy Carr) has to go on a business trip, leaving the kids alone with Kim. Thing is, with dad gone, Kim shows her own colours, is mean to the kids, and eventually even abusive. Now Michael and Amy just think she might be a bad person, but Sam soon gets the idea that something more sinister might be at work, something that has to do with the urban legend about the "Bloody Man" he has just researched for school, and that pretty much would suggest that Kim isn't Kim at all but a demon impersonating her. And things sure get more grim, as first the phone lines are cut, then there's a power outage, and instead of trying to have a calming influence on the children, Kim does her best to keep them apart and at one point tries to strangle Sam. And things only go downhill from there ... and yes, Sam was right, it really is the Bloody Man - but how to fight an urban legend ...

Now one thing's for sure, the film's director Daniel Benedict sure is a fan of the 1980s, as this movie's filled to the brim with allusions and throwback props to that decade, and the movie does its best to look like a movie of old, with the script perfectly mirroring teen horrors of old, while at the same time The Bloody Man totally lacks any ironic distance to the long gone era. And one has to tip one's hat to Daniel Benedict for sure, he has created a pretty perfect hommage, unfortunately not only taking the good from yesteryear's genre cinema (of which there's plenty of) but also a certain amount of cheesiness that good horror has long since overcome. The other point of critique is that at a running time of circa 2 and a quarter hours the film's rather over-saturated and seems to take its hommage to (literally) extreme length, trying to fit as much 80s mainstays and paraphernalia into its story as possible. But for what it does, the film is pretty perfect, and I guess how much you'll enjoy it depends solely how much you enjoy horrors from back when, as for what it is it's fast-paced, slickly directed, with suspense and jump scares in all the right places, as well as the occasional horror and gruesomeness, to guarantee a fun ride.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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