Blood Creek (2009)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning

A few years before the outbreak of World War 2, the Third Reich send a professor to live with a poor German family who've relocated to Virginia in America. He reveals himself as a practitioner of the dark occult arts, who takes over their home and takes on a venomous blood lust to survive. Years later, two brothers are driven back to the house he stayed at on a mission of personal revenge, only to find the real perpetrator come back to life and try to exact his venom on them.

This is the 'latest' Joel Schumacher film that it would seem has actually been held back for two years and appears to have arrived straight to DVD on these shores. His last (and most recent) foray into the horror genre The Number 23 with Jim Carrey was a rockety, shambolic road indeed that showed a pretty decent (if never great) director veering off course a bit, but Blood Creek is sadly evidence of a past it hack who's gone over the hill.

An unfathomable mess, the story is a ridiculous, convoluted mess, opening in a pretentious black and white film noir style before flitting the story to the present day and back into colour again, with a plot that's lost you about twenty minutes in, marred with a blurry, slap shot filming style that's even with the even more shambolic story, before finally revealing a villain that seems like Freddy Kruegger with a liver problem.

It's all just a nonsensical, sad revalation of a director who's deteriorated into what could at best be called senility and at worst madness. *

Fmovies: A Joel Schumacher helmed horror flick starring Michael Fassbender as a deranged, occult obsessed Nazi zombie vampire, hunted by Lincoln Burrows from Prison Break. Sounds like a flick from an alternate dimension that doesn't exist, right? Well it's out there, tough to find as it was somehow buried around it's 2009 release, and relegated to a relic before it was even a decade old. Shame, because it's a ton of warped, bloody fun. Officially titled 'Blood Creek' on iTunes, it can also be found as 'Town Creek' or simply 'Runes' elsewhere, but like they say, a rose by any other name. Fassbender is all kinds of scary in a black and white prologue as a Nazi occult agent who shows up at a rural American farm to study ancient Nordic runes which may hold the key to resurrection of the dead. His chilling work initially is nothing compared to the balls-out, gory makeup covered incarnation he gets to prance around in later though. In present day, two brothers race into the foggy backwaters to stamp out this evil, and they're played by an intense Dominic Purcell, as well as Superman himself, Henry Cavill. Not a whole lot of time is spent on character development for all involved, the film choosing instead to jump headlong into a notably gory free for all, banding together with the poor German family who has had to deal with this psycho for almost a generation on their farm. At a crisp ninety minutes, there ain't much time for anything but action and gore, with a few scarcely scattered, breathless moments of exposition that were already made clear in that prologue, the one interlude of the film that isn't soaked in adrenaline. Hats off to Fassbender under all that chatty, gooey makeup, his physicality is really menacing, and who else gets to play a Nazi vampire zombie who pounds a metal stake into his own forehead to make room for an emerging third eye? Truly a villain for the ages, had the film been allowed to gain any notoriety. And what other film can boast a sequence in which Purcell eagerly blasts zombified, rabid horses with a shotgun, chunks flying all over the barn? Such are the levels of disturbed imagination on parade. Poor Schumacher though, really. This would've been his first good film in awhile back then, and the studio goes in for the kill on every single marketing front, not even giving it decent room to breathe on DVD. At least it's still floating about on iTunes, where any horror fan would be rewarded with a rental.

Who knew Joel Schumacher had a horror movie in him? Let alone a good one? Blood Creek takes the Nazi fascination with the occult and uses it as the springboard to an exciting, suspenseful scarefest. The absolutely brilliant cast--including Michael Fassbender, Dominic Purcell, and Henry Cavill--does a stalwart job all round, and where some other directors and their performers would have allowed a picture like Blood Creek to succumb to low camp, everyone involved with the film plays it razor straight. The atmosphere is dark and malevolent, and the limited setting--primarily an isolated farm somewhere in West Virginia--used to great effect. This is a gory film, and while some of the on screen mayhem should have probably been left to the imagination, the copious bloodletting is realistic and certainly holds viewer attention. The only reason this isn't a minor classic is because of the numerous plot holes--lots of things happen that even within the context of the very bizarre plot don't make a lot of sense, and other plot threads are left frustratingly unexplained. Otherwise, if you can take the graphic carnage in stride, this is a superior horror film that would see several of its stars go on to bigger and better things.

Blood Creek fmovies. Joel Schumacher seems to have fallen. I didn't expect him to be doing low budget Horror thrillers anyway. But then again, the guy knows a bit about filmmaking, so this movie is pretty solid (and has a very good cast, not only Mr. Fassbender).

While it seems uncertain and not tonally correct at times, has a few script flaws here and there, it does flow quite nicely (if you let it and you're not interrupting it with questions that is). The story is kinda nice, the ending more or less predictable. Some nice scenes of gore and suspense. I guess if you don't have high expectation, it's the best way to watch the movie.

I hadn't heard anything about this movie prior to today, but checking IMDb to see what the local cheap theater had to offer came up with this. Having no desire to see anything else that was playing, my wife and I decided to drop a couple bucks on it and we were not disappointed.

In general, I am not a fan of WW2, Holocaust, or Nazi related films simply due to the obvious nature of nearly every plot line related to them. Even Inglorious Basterds irritated me because of this. Thankfully, Blood Creek takes itself not very seriously and throws in lots of other random plot devices (Viking runes, zombies, the occult, the war in Iraq, etc.) that make little to no sense but serve the film well.

If you like crappy modern B style horror films (I saw another commenter mention Drag Me To Hell, which I also enjoyed more than just about any other "big" release I've seen this year), then you can't really go wrong here. Iffy acting, senseless plot, and bad CGI are not enough to defeat the high entertainment value of this fast-paced flick. If I had expectations for this, or had I paid $10 to see it, I would probably be pretty irritated. But if you can catch it at your cheapo second run theater, I can think of far worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

A friend raved about this movie, which I'd not seen nor heard of. A good cast which surprised me, and a possible attempt at a series. The idea was not wholly original, but I've seen it more on tv and comic books than in movie format. Not bad, some great visuals with the horses, and some good make-up effects. Not as good as I'd hoped from my friends recommendation, but enjoyable enough.