Bloodline Killer commences on Halloween Eve when young Connor (James Gaudioso, Mid-Century, The Ghost and the Whale) is watching his father get slashed by a mask-wearing man dubbed Skulleton (Adam Shippey, The Many Saints of Newark, The Family Fang). He wants to protect him, but there’s nothing he can do, since his mother Moira (Shawnee Smith, Iron Eagle, Saw X) comes in with a gun and shoots the killer multiple times. While this is enough to take the savage down, during her moment of distraction, the killer’s corpse disappears.
Back at the hospital, Connor and his brother Michael (Drew Moerlein, Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, South of Hell), each blame the other for the death of their father almost coming to blows. Detective Cypher (Tyrese Gibson, Squealer, Fast X) and his associate detective Fink (Kresh Novakovic, Midnight Hustle, The Night Never Sleeps) learn that an impersonator of a police officer already interviewed the injured Moira. As a shocking twist, it is revealed that Skulleton is actually her cousin.
In the other scenarios, Samantha (Taryn Manning, The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, Every Last One of Them), the sister of the killer finds him and tranquilizes him so that she can take him home and heal his wounds. “Now I am a nurse, and I will look after you.” The time goes a year ahead and can you guess what follows then?
Ante Novakovic, director of the film (Sanctioning Evil, Horror Film American Fright Fest) together with writers/actors James and Anthony Gaudioso, who had relationships previously co-wrote Medium and co-directed The Ghost and The Whale made me wondering about things from the beginning. Sadly, it was such questions as: “What happened to Moira that she was hospitalized and how did she get her arm injured in the first place?”
That forms the very substance of suspense in Bloodline Killer, with none of the answers in sight. Even though the rest of the film has a long exposition, the screenplay almost instantly resolves issues that ought to have remained unresolved until much later in the narrative. By the time of the thirty fifth minute, when Mora is with her psychoanalyst Dr Lucien, played by Bruce Dern in great performances as in The’Burbs, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch, you are able to piece together most of the plot and there are therefore no shocks later in a film that has so far one hour and ten minutes to go.
What is worse, the narration continues as if there is an intrigue in the whole saga that has to be resolved. We know the murderer’s identity and for what reasons he is hunting Moira and her family, but Bloodline Killer tries to twist the tale for us because obviously, the filmmakers believe that the audience is dull-witted to comprehend the visuals presented to them.
We instead take way too long watching a brother try to reestablish a relationship with his ex (Montanna Gillis, The Vatican Tapes, American Fighter) mid-dysfunctional Connor’s acts and subsequent Lee’s yawning killing spree elevated only with a few dull shades of blood. Moira, naturally, expects what is coming when the first murder victim appears, but what’s new the police officers refuse to listen to her. No, he cannot be alive because her bullets should have killed him last year, even when some show up dead.
If this looks like trying to create a franchise Campbell’s style, which extends the Halloween duplicates, then you are correct. And there are definitely poorer templates to turn into slashers. However, it is done so poorly that slasher fans will be wishing they were watching Busta Rhymes knock Michael Myers in Halloween Resurrection rather than this rubbish.
Bloodline Killer tops the scales at one hour and forty-five minutes, a length that is very much unnecessary considering the film has no surprises, no scares and frankly speaking, very little in terms of entertainment value. Even one of the potentially exciting scenes, that is the final confrontation with Lee, is such a pitch black scene that one feels he is watching two silhouettes of floors beating each other.
Bloodline Killer seemed like an interesting candidate for the slasher sub-genre, however it is the most basic and terrible in execution of such genre, and it tends to drag on for a duration that is incomprehensible. There is, however, some relief there is no scope of having a franchise, after this any consideration for a sequel will be Dead on Arrival.
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