Book of Blood

Clive Barker released a series of short stories back in 1984 through 1986 called the Books of Blood; exploring themes of fantasy and horror. Barker was originally a writer and later turned his interests towards that of film making. His background has allowed him to release great titles like Hellraiser (based on Barker's The Hellbound Heart), Nightbreed (A tale based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos), Lord of Illusions (The Last Illusion), and Midnight Meat Train (which also happens to be another short story from the Books of Blood). This particular films draws influence from two of his short stories, The Book of Blood and On Jerusalem Street (a postscript). There are 6 volumes to the Books of Blood, but personally I've only read Volume 4.

A paranormal investigator hires an equipment expert and a so-called psychic to explore a house - one that has witnessed a brutal murder. What they discover is not your typical spiritual activity but an intersection for the dead. This isn't your run-of-the-mill haunted house story; there is plenty to think about and consider with a fair amount of violence and thrills. The final act of this film is really awesome, almost making it worth it just for that alone. Unfortunately Barker did not direct or produce this film, but John Harrison did a wonderful job representing him. Harrison did great work of his own, such as 1990's Tales from the Darkside: The Movie and several episodes of Tales from the Crypt and Tales from the Darkside.

Clive is back, in some form or another! Now, I shall recite a quote by Stephen King from 25 years ago: "I have seen the future of horror, his name is Clive Barker."

I first saw this almost a decade back on a dvd which I own. Revisited it recently cos i am planning to watch the new adaptation. It is based on Clive Barker's Books of Blood n has Doug Bradley in a tiny role. After a young girl is violently raped and beaten in her bed n her skin ripped off, a paranormal expert and her cameraman investigate the house to unlock its mysteriously murderous past.

The film moves at a very slow pace, there r few characters n locations. It has a gory skin ripping scene, tight tits n gets a bit spooky at times, the water fountain scene is well shot.

Actually I do like the theme of story. And it has a pretty good ending. The problem is, what lies before that and how the story is treated. While I haven't read the source material (book by Clive Barker), I'm sure it is a far better and more complex story to be found there, which didn't translate to the screen.

Apart from the pacing and a story twist that will leave with a bad feeling (again, I don't know if it's the same in the novel), what really gets to you, is the fact, that the actors are pretty dull. I'm not saying bad, just dull. It's exactly about sympathizing with them, but they leave you more than cold (no pun intended). Which might work for other movies, but not here. Still there are a few scares, it's quite nicely shot and the aforementioned ending ... other than that? Not much!

I am a huge Clive Barker fan, but this is a weak adaptation. It is hard to stretch a very short story into a full-length film. Still, this script could have maintained the intelligence of the story more and the direction could have communicated Barker's distressing world view better.

I have three main gripes.

First, the story's focus: the film turns the original story's dysfunctional mentor relationship between the older female researcher and the younger male medium into a full blown, treacly love story. Ugh!

Second, the tone: many scenes feature little more than furtive glances, longing looks, or sudden, eruptive declarations of love/hatred, which makes the movie too often feel more like a telenovela or an episode of Red Shoe Diaries than a horror film.

Third, the film's vision of the supernatural: in the short story, the "ghosts" gleefully wreak havoc on the living. In the film, they just want to be heard. As if this diminished characterization of the avenging spirits weren't cloying enough, the film features a very long parade of see-through CGI phantoms, all of whom look like they just marched over from Disney's Haunted Mansion.

Despite my complaints, the film has flashes of true Barker-- the young girl being flayed as her parents helplessly watch, the creepy séance scenes (hey- wasn't that Pinhead?), and the film's framing story (where Jonas Armstrong gets the chance to show that he can indeed act). Also, the film makes great use of Edinburgh locations to create an unrelentingly bleak Barkeresque atmosphere. It also makes great use of Jonas Armstrong's lacerated, naked body to generate the kind of exquisitely wrong homoeroticism that is pure Barker.

I read Clive Barker's 'Books of Blood' years ago and instantly fell in love with them; they had a wonderful combination of horror and fantasy, fear and humor. I've been pinning for them to be filmed for years and I finally got my wish to marginally mixed results.

A parapsychology professor and her assistant have been trying to prove their theories about the afterlife and beyond when an opportunity presents itself in the form of a house with a long paranormal history and a university student who seems to be a psychic. They decide to use his abilities to try to tap into the house's energies, but things are not as they seem and the experiment goes in ways no one could have guessed.

First things first, I had a few issues with the film. First was the bookend story segments that surrounds the plot; the movie essentially spoils the best part of the story from the very first seen. The second (and bigger) problem the movie has is the running time; at 100 minutes the movie is too damn long. This is based on a short story (two actually) and there is just not enough driving plot to justify the length. A good 20 minutes needed to be trimmed off, as is the movie is gets pretty slow at parts. The last real problem I had was that the stories this is based on weren't the best stories from the books, they were just the first stories in them; the reason for this seems to be that a series of films based on the books is in the works and they wanted to start from the beginning, 'Pig Blood Blues' (great story) is apparently up next.

Having said all that I still enjoyed the film more than I was frustrated by it. Even though this wasn't the best story from the novels it is still an engaging tale of the macabre and features some occasional excellent horror imagery. The principal actors in the limited cast are all suited nicely to their respective rolls and the character dialogue has a pleasantly moody cadence to it.

The visual and gore effects are (relative to the genre) fairly limited, but what is on display packs quite a visceral punch. One particularly memorable moment involves a poor girl getting her face peeled like an orange. That being said, this is not a gore film, despite what the DVD box would have you believe.

The setting and location of the film (Scotland) fit the story well and provide a Gothic backdrop for the action. The house were most of the film takes place is a appropriately grim without feeling like a clique spook house.

Despite the some slow sections in the middle and the unfortunate story reveal early on, it manages to be a creepy tale about death and beyond.

7/10