Bleeders is, in a single word, baffling. It features a competent cast, including the always fantastic Rutger Hauer, and a bunch of unknowns who provide us with far better performances than we generally have inflicted upon us in low-budget straight-to-video horror. The location is gorgeous - a foggy fishing island somewhere off the eastern coast of Canada. The gore and monster makeup are extremely good, too. Even the script is adequate, containing no really awful dialogue or bizarre character motivations.
Add all these elements together, and you should end up with a solid little low budget horror film. Instead... well, you get Bleeders.
Its main fault is a serious cinematic crime: it is boring. I lay the blame for this unforgiveable flaw at the feet of the director and, to a lesser extent, the composer. The whole film is terribly paced. There is never any sense of urgency or danger throughout. It seems that the director has never seen a horror or thriller film before, as he certainly has no idea how to built suspense or deliver a shock. Scenes dealing with life and death feel identical to those featuring leisurely chats about genealogy. The whole film just feels terribly flat.
The score really doesn't help. It is simply the most boring and pointless movie score I have heard in years. In the first few minutes, I was thinking it was pretty. An hour and a half later, after listening to what seemed to be the same five minutes of music on a loop, I hated it. The music, like the direction, is utterly flat. Character scenes and supposedly scary scenes are all scored the same. Like the director, the composer seemed to have no idea what a horror film score is there for. It certainly isn't supposed to be something pretty to listen to when there's no dialogue.
These two problems are bad enough, but they are compounded by the fact that Bleeders is shot on video. This constant visual reminder of the movie's cheap nature, as well as its inept direction and bland score, make the whole film feel like an episode of some dodgy TV show, destined to be axed after a single season. Only the occasional splashes of gore and explicit sex scenes mark it as being something not made for TV.
It's a terrible waste of talent and potential. Okay, the best bits of the story are stolen from Lovecraft, but it could have been a fun Lovecraft ripoff, as opposed to yet another bad one. What a pity... it really could have been good.
Add all these elements together, and you should end up with a solid little low budget horror film. Instead... well, you get Bleeders.
Its main fault is a serious cinematic crime: it is boring. I lay the blame for this unforgiveable flaw at the feet of the director and, to a lesser extent, the composer. The whole film is terribly paced. There is never any sense of urgency or danger throughout. It seems that the director has never seen a horror or thriller film before, as he certainly has no idea how to built suspense or deliver a shock. Scenes dealing with life and death feel identical to those featuring leisurely chats about genealogy. The whole film just feels terribly flat.
The score really doesn't help. It is simply the most boring and pointless movie score I have heard in years. In the first few minutes, I was thinking it was pretty. An hour and a half later, after listening to what seemed to be the same five minutes of music on a loop, I hated it. The music, like the direction, is utterly flat. Character scenes and supposedly scary scenes are all scored the same. Like the director, the composer seemed to have no idea what a horror film score is there for. It certainly isn't supposed to be something pretty to listen to when there's no dialogue.
These two problems are bad enough, but they are compounded by the fact that Bleeders is shot on video. This constant visual reminder of the movie's cheap nature, as well as its inept direction and bland score, make the whole film feel like an episode of some dodgy TV show, destined to be axed after a single season. Only the occasional splashes of gore and explicit sex scenes mark it as being something not made for TV.
It's a terrible waste of talent and potential. Okay, the best bits of the story are stolen from Lovecraft, but it could have been a fun Lovecraft ripoff, as opposed to yet another bad one. What a pity... it really could have been good.