By Ben Bussey
Please believe me when I say I wish the words ‘no-budget indie horror’ were not all but synonymous with the words ‘painfully bad filmmaking.’ Occasionally we see the odd pocket-change, DV-shot production from an unknown cast and crew which is well-written, well-directed, inventive, energetic, entertaining, and when we do you’d best believe we celebrate. But more often than not when a such a movie comes our way, it’s more along the lines of… this.
As prosaic a backwoods torture-slasher you could ever hope to not get stuck watching, The Blood Harvest is the eighth film from Belfast-based writer-director George Clarke, and while I haven’t seen any of his earlier work I have to wonder what if anything he learned from his previous experience. It’s that same depressingly over-familiar spectacle we so often get from the indies: this isn’t a so-bad-it’s-almost-good movie, it’s just flat-out bad on every level, and while its ineptitude might momentarily raise the odd smirk, it takes very little time to leave you utterly bored shitless.
The plot, so much as it bears repeating (well, in truth it doesn’t, at all, but I’ve got to pad this out somehow), centres on a series of murders in Belfast with a notable pattern: Achilles tendons slashed, one eyeball gouged out, bodies drained of blood. The local hard-boiled, bearded, pony-tailed detective Jack Chaplin (Robert Render) is on the case, but when he posits a bizarre theory on the matter – suggesting the killer might be something other than human – he promptly finds himself off the case and out of a job. Nonetheless, the murders continue. We get to see them, naturally, and they’re drawn out via lengthy, tension-free stalk sequences followed by lengthy, tension-free torture sequences in which we’re given the distinct impression that our maniacal killers may be somewhat mentally impaired. In the meantime, Chaplin continues his investigation in private, checking in on the matter with his old partner Hatcher (Jean-Paul Van Der Velde). But as he gets closer, he comes to uncover some disturbing facts… well, I guess the idea is they’re meant to be disturbing, only it’s impossible to give a shit given how boring it all is.
I think the key problem with The Blood Harvest – indeed, the problem with a lot of subpar no-budget horror of this sort – is that it’s taking itself far too seriously. Having a victim in waiting declare “this is so cliched, like a scene in a Hollywood horror movie” might have seemed witty and bold for about an hour and a half in 1996, but today it’s just lazy. Throwing in such a contrived hint of self-awareness early on is surely intended to suggest the movie is going to defy expectation elsewhere, but The Blood Harvest doesn’t even come close to achieving this. I’ll admit I may have found the plot hard to predict, but that’s primarily because I found it so hard to follow. Bland police procedural scenes (which were always going to struggle to convince with only three actors playing police, and none of them particularly looking the part) intersect with overlong torture scenes, in which people we don’t know and have no reason to care about are savaged by other people whose motivations are unknown – and while the idea may have been to build intrigue, leave us puzzling and puzzling as to just what is really going on, the only question it really leaves echoing in your head “when will this damn movie end?”
I’m almost as sick of seeing movies of this calibre as I am of having to write reviews like this. I go into every movie wanting to enjoy it, I really do; and despite all the masses of evidence to the contrary, I do believe it’s a good thing that filmmaking technology is so readily available nowadays, giving anyone who wants to make a movie the means to do so. But that sure as shit off a shovel doesn’t mean that all the resulting movies belong in the home entertainment market. Watching a movie like The Blood Harvest, I struggle to believe that anyone involved – either the filmmakers or the distributors – really, truly think they’ve made something that warrants being shared with the world. Come on now people, please, be honest with yourselves. Take a long, hard look at what you’ve made, and ask yourself honestly if it’s any good. Hand in hand with this, ask yourself whether it’s the best that you could do. If the answer to both is no, maybe just go back to the drawing board – or maybe, just maybe, consider doing something else.
Wow, this one really left me in a bad mood…
The Blood Harvest is out on Region 2 DVD on 25th January 2016, from Left Films.