"Blood Relations" follows a young woman (Lydie Denier) who accompanies her boyfriend to his rich family's estate in the dead of winter. Her encounters with his estranged father (Jan Rubes), a brain surgeon, become increasingly strange, and the family's dark secrets start to emerge.
While certainly not an accomplished masterwork, "Blood Relations" is an atmospheric psychological horror movie that has the temperament of a hard-edged Lifetime TV movie from the early-1990s. What works about it is that it boasts an atmospheric setting, a number of moody nighttime sequences, and a twisty plot that keeps the viewer in "what is going here?" territory.
The film mostly plays like a sordid V. C. Andrews-adjacent family drama until the final act, where it becomes a full-fledged horror movie. It does rely on a number of repetitive sequences that are portrayed ambiguously (as in they could be dreams, or they may in fact be real), which wears thin. That being said, the grim denouement packs enough of a punch that I found myself mildly applauding the film for going for the jugular. The performances here are middling at best, though Jan Rubes is effective as the dubious and sinister patriarch.
All in all, "Blood Relations" is a minor effort with a TV-movie feel, but it does get progressively darker as it moves toward its conclusion. It is a decent horror flick with enough idiosyncrasies and moodiness that warrant a viewing from genre fans. 6/10.
