Easy to watch and featuring quite a story, Bloodline is one of those movies that were the staple of the eighties and nineties horror genre. You have someone ordinary, whom you wouldn’t think in a million years is a serial killer and he turns out to be, guess what? He turns out to be a serial killer! The movie is well aware of this and uses it to its advantage. So we get this quite upbeat and even thrilling at times atmosphere and editing keeping things going. And they will need some going because we learn very early on what’s going on and this takes away most of the tension. If you’ve seen the television show Dexter about a vigilante forensic technician killing criminals, you’ll be on familiar ground.
Making the most out of the source material, Bloodline opens with quite an engaging scene immediately hooking you in. We’ve got a creepy atmosphere, full-frontal nudity, and a vicious murder with a lot of blood, making you wonder what the fuck is going on here. This trend of graphic violence continues throughout the movie. However, one scene was really shocking to me and it’s not even related to any kind of violence. You’ll know which one as soon as it starts as you simply cannot miss it. The experience of having a baby is a traumatic one but also quite relatable.
Evan Cole’s life couldn’t be better. He’s in a great marriage and expecting a baby while working as a social worker at a local school. However, Evan has a dark secret that no one knows about. After listening to kids talk to him about their disturbing experiences every day at work, Evan has decided to do something about that. Something quite drastic and horrifying.
Seann William Scott was phenomenal here with a disturbingly honest performance. And those fucking eyes man, they look like killers eyes with that deadness to them. I had no idea Seann had this in him. I just wish the rest of the characters were equally developed but what can you do. The cinematography is sleek and Bloodline has that big movie visual vibe. The same goes for the soundtrack consisting of a lot of swanky synthwave tunes. The whole package reminded me of another television show featuring serial killers, Too Old To Die Young.
There’s nothing revolutionary about Bloodline. This is a classic serial killer movie with a running time of just under ninety minutes. All this being said, we will also glance over some interesting themes. Generational trauma, mommy issues and all sorts of other things that can lead to this type of behavior. And if it feels like we’ve been over these things a million times before it’s because we were. But that doesn’t make them any less true. Finally, I just want to say I really liked the ending here.
Director: Henry Jacobson
Writers: Avra Fox-Lerner, Henry Jacobson, Will Honley
Cast: Seann William Scott, Mariela Garriga, Dale Dickey, Christie Herring, Kevin Carroll, Nick Boraine
Fun Facts: Seann William Scott’s first leading role in a horror movie.
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IMDb Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8883524/
