Bloodthirsty

Bloodthirsty is an incredibly well directed horror film. It’s a shame that the story doesn’t pull its weight compared to the directing.

The film’s lead character is Grey. Grey is a rising indie pop star who suffers from hallucinations of turning into an animal and feeding on flesh. She also has a girlfriend named Charlie. Grey is invited by a reclusive producer named Vaughn Daniels to record her next album with him at his home. So, Grey and her girlfriend go. This is despite the fact that Vaughn was accused of murdering a former collaborator. Once they meet Vaughn, he’s just a walking series of red flags. But despite Charlie’s concern, Grey thinks that Vaughn is helping her create great music. However, Grey’s hallucinations worsen and Vaughn seems eager to bring out Grey’s violent tendencies.

Bloodthirsty was co-written by indie pop musician, Lowell. Lowell also created the movie’s soundtrack. She’s much better at writing music than writing dialogue. The big problem with Bloodthirsty is how much focus is put onto the music. I feel like Grey being a pop musician and working on an album should’ve been at most, framework for this werewolf horror movie. Instead, Grey working on her album is pretty much the focus of the film. Correspondingly, A cut of the film that only focuses on the werewolf and horror elements would be a pretty brief short film.

The film also asks a lot of its audience in understanding Grey’s motivation as a musician. For most of the film, her reason for continuing to stay and work with Vaughn is that he’s helping her create brilliant music. The first act spends a lot of time setting up Grey’s ambitions as a songwriter and musician. Lots of work goes into having its audience understand the plight of musicians. Despite all of this focus, it doesn’t work for me. Vaughn is too fucking creepy. Is the fact that he told you to play a lyric in minor key worth the fact that he secretly smells you, tells you to stop taking your psychiatric medication and deadpans “I know all about you?” If it were me, I would simply listen to my rational girlfriend and get the hell away from this dude. RIP to Grey, but I’m different.

It is quietly progressive to have Grey’s girlfriend be the voice of reason and normalcy. Lots of queer horror movies conflate doing queer stuff with a descent into madness or depravity. Conversely, Bloodthirsty features Charlie as the rational one. She pleads with Grey to continue taking her medication and most importantly, to leave this obvious horror movie set up Grey finds herself in.

My big hot take on Bloodthirsty is that it might work better if you watched it on mute. The story is simple and the visual storytelling adept enough that you don’t need dialogue to understand the story. The dialogue and story cliches are very much the weakest part of the film. Comparatively, the direction and visual elements are working overtime. This is a great looking movie. It’s also a movie that understands visual horror queues and how to set a mood with visuals. With such adept visual aspects, the film hardly needs dialogue and might be better without it.

Bloodthirsty is a mixed bag of really good direction and below average storytelling. The film certainly doesn’t tread too much new horror ground. Its obsession with its musical framework is an overall detriment to the horror elements of the film. What somewhat elevates Bloodthirsty is its incredibly adept directing and pleasing visual atmosphere.

Overall rating: 5.3/10

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