(2009)
Mark Deming
Most horror films demand a certain suspension of disbelief, but when less than five minutes into Blood Creek a family of German expatriates living in Virginia in 1936 get a letter asking them to rent a room to a visitor from the old country which includes a generous check with a prominent swastika on it, you know (a) getting that cashed in an American bank would be no easy task even before America entered World War II and (b) there's just no way this could go well, and anyone with any sense would simply say no. Of course, the Woolner family lack such foresight, and once Blood Creek jumps into the 21st century, the film moves from hard to swallow to simply ridiculous and a little silly.
Throwing together assorted bits of vampire and zombie mythos with Adolf Hitler's well-documented fascination with the occult, Blood Creek tries to root itself in a plausible reality, with much-put-upon paramedic Evan Marshall (Henry Cavill) looking after his angry, aging father and helping out his sister-in-law, who has been raising two kids on her own after the disappearance of his brother Victor (Dominic Purcell), a veteran of the war in Iraq. But once Victor suddenly reappears in a frantic scene that at first plays like a dream sequence, the story takes a left turn as the brothers head out to take revenge on that modern horror film staple, The Bad Family...only in this case, the family aren't the real bad guys after all.
Director Joel Schumacher seems more interested in atmosphere than character development in the early innings, and once we get to the Woolner family's battered farmhouse, he dives head first into a swamp of shaky cams, fast cutting, and shadowy lighting so dim that it's hard to tell who is chasing who (or what). Schumacher takes so long to fill us in on the why that most viewers may give up figuring it all out by the halfway point, and though the frequent gore is clearly influenced by the current torture-porn cycle, the grit doesn't blend well with the story's supernatural elements.
Blood Creek does eventually get around to explaining itself, but once we're up to speed, suspense has gone out the window and there's no real explanation of what the main villain is supposed to be -- yeah, he's a Nazi and he likes blood, but is there any reason why he looks that way or can peel off his skin at will? Michael Fassbender looks creepy as the undying villain but doesn't get to do much else, and Henry Cavill and Dominic Purcell never elevate their characters above cookie-cutter heroics. Emma Booth fares best in the thankless role of Liese, the story's designated explainer, but being the best thing in Blood Creek isn't much to brag about; there's a germ of a good idea in this movie, but Schumacher and David Kajganich don't know how to make it work, and when a movie with flaming undead horses manages to be boring, you know someone has really dropped the ball.
Blood Creek on AllMovie
Blood Creek (2009)
