Blood Predator (2009)
Reviewed by The Foywonder
Starring Merry Simkins, Bill Devlin, Rayne Aspergen, Mark Irvingsen, Jackie Freed
Written and Directed by Paul Gagne
I’d love to get the writer-director of Blood Predator seated on a couch next to me for a special screening of his film; every 5-10 minutes I’d ask him if he was honestly entertained by any of this and anytime he had the nerve to say yes I’d give him a hard back elbow to the face and a stern warning not to lie to me again. The only time I’d make an exception would be if I asked him during the very brief scenes where the women with nice racks popped their tops. Other than that, if he were feeling particularly defensive about his work I suspect there’d be so many elbows to the face thrown I’d start looking like Tony Jaa on a bad acid trip.
I’m sorry but I refuse to believe any of the people actually involved in the making of this motion picture would be entertained by what they took part in creating. This plotless bore with sporadically changing film stock took me several days of bit-by-bit viewings to finally slog all the way through. The first seven minutes consist of a single character slowly skulking about a snowbound cabin until he finally gets killed by a split second shot of a monster. Damn near nothing happens for the next hour to follow. By the time the alien creatures finally do go on the attack during the final 20-minutes I suspect most people will have long since ejected this DVD from their player.
Because this movie sucked so much life out of me I’m simply going to quote the synopsis I found on Shoreline Entertainment’s website:
“A private jet crashes in the Sierra mountains but all seven passengers survive. With temperatures reaching the low 30s, the group searches for shelter and discovers an abandoned avalanche station. With a torrential snow storm headed their way, they elect to take refuge until the weather improves. Two days pass, and with no rescue team in sight, the group decides to search for the plane, in hopes of fixing the radio to call help, but the fresh snow has covered up their tracks.
Stranded and starving, Zak, a snowboard champion, sets out on his own and soon turns up ripped to shreds. They are not alone.
One by one, the survivors are devoured alive by an alien creature with an insatiable appetite for human flesh. The remaining four band together to fight back and kill the human-eating aliens – or be eaten. But the survivors are seemingly no match for these extraterrestrial beasts, as they have multiplied, and are able to spear their prey with a barbed-like tongue that pulls their victims into their razor sharp teeth that shred human flesh like a haywire garbage disposal.
Hoping against hope, the survivors don’t give up. They devise a plan to trap the demons from outer space and explode the cabin, but they’re surprise-attacked by the aliens, leaving the trap unfinished. Three survivors escape, but one remains behind and bravely sacrifices herself by releasing the explosives.”
Let me first say I do find amusing the synopsis on their website pretty much gives away the whole movie. It also accurately conveys just how little plot there is to the movie. It also makes it sound more thrilling than it actually is. I’m all in favor of character development but there’s a near one-hour stretch of film that’s nothing but these people sitting around, standing around, walking around, talking to one another and let me assure you not one of them has a single interesting thing to say. The scenario is cliche, the dialogue is awful, and the characters are bores. I hate it when it feels like I’m watching a movie that’s going out of its way to kill time until the third act.
When the aliens finally take center stage it is still nothing to get excited about. Look; I’m an advocate of practical special effects (and when you see the pathetic few shots of the homemade computer animated aliens in action you will be too); stationary puppets still don’t cut it in my book. They look like toothy Alien-esque bugs about the size of a small cat with ability to shoot a tentacle harpoon for reeling in victims. All well and good until you see them in action.
I’m just cutting this review off right here. No point going any further. Blood Predator is a complete waste of time on all counts. I fully realize the budget was practically non-existent but that only excuses so much. Not even laughably bad. My only entertainment stemmed from the set-up being that these people in this cabin are supposed to be snowed in even though the first exterior shot of this cabin clearly shows there’s not a flake of snow on the ground and what snow we do see around the cabin later on doesn’t look at all like it would have prevented them from escaping sooner unless they were just too damn lazy to get out and walk, and I refuse to believe they were to lazy to walk since slowly walking around the interiors of this cabin seemed to comprise about half the movie.
“>
0 out of 5
Discuss Blood Predator in the Dread Central forums!
Categorized:Reviews
