Bloodthirsty

...although I do appreciate the craftsmanship involved. That, along with Greg Bryk's strong screen presence -which seems to be an involuntary, natural aura that he projects even when his part asks for the kind of overly subdued performance that leaves little room for entertaining theatrics- and Michael Ironside's small part are the sole reasons why I'm giving this a three stars rating instead of the bare minimum that the site allows and my guts were stubbornly insisting on leaving.

Pedestrian, boring and unimaginative direction not only hampers an equally pedestrian, boring and unimaginative script but also exacerbates its flaws: soulless main characters, the most egregious one for starters, who engage in melodramatic and humorless conversations -peppered with an annoying over abundance of tired 'in-show-biz-dog-eats-dog' cliches-, that get increasingly redundant as the movie goes on and its overstretched plot runs out of wind. Meanwhile, a couple of criminally underdeveloped supporting characters meander around aimlessly looking for a purpose that the writers actively deny, which renders their predicament during the third, final act pointless to the emotionally detached viewer.

There's also, as I just mentioned, this dull and tired metaphor about the ruthlessness of entertaining industries running under this trainwreck's rails, but the less said about it the better; except, maybe, for the fact that everything this movie tried to tell, or imply, was better told and successfully implied almost three decades ago in Mike Nichols' vastly underrated "Wolf". A movie, by the way, from which this inferior copycat not only borrows most of its subtext but also dares to steal entire scenes, almost shot-by-shot, without understanding how and why those scenes worked perfectly in harmony with a coherent story, well-paced plot development and fully fleshed characters, both main AND secondary ones. In fact, it's better to enjoy your well-deserved leisure time revisiting -or experiencing for the first time, if you happen to be that lucky- Nichols' "Wolf" than wasting it on this self-important, derivative succedaneous. Don't make the same mistake I did and avoid it as much as you can.

While the 2020 movie "Bloodthirsty" is an interesting approach on the werewolf genre of movies, then it wasn't really an overwhelmingly good horror movie. This was more of a psychological supernatural drama than it was a horror movie.

The storyline told in "Bloodthirsty", as written by writers Wendy Hill-Tout and Lowell definitely deviated from the usual straight forward and no messing around tendency that there usually is in a werewolf movie. So if you sit down to watch "Bloodthirsty" and expect to see a creature feature with impressive human to beast transformation scenes and an abundance of carnage, then you will be sorely disappointed. Because that is by no means what "Bloodthirsty" turned out to be.

I found the storyline interesting, but the pacing of the movie was a bit too slow and mundane for my liking. And that resulted in director Amelia Moses delivering a lukewarm movie for me.

"Bloodthirsty" has a pretty small cast ensemble, but I will say that the cast really carried the movie well and put on great performances. Especially Greg Bryk (playing Vaughn Daniels), he was just phenomenally cast for the role. It was a shame, though, that Michael Ironside didn't have a larger part to play in the movie.

Visually then "Bloodythirsty" is not a movie that relies on special effects. There is a little bit of blood in the movie. And some fairly simplistic transformation scenes from human to werewolf. It wasn't impressively done, but the effects served their purposes well enough.

All in all, "Bloodthirsty" is a watchable movie, and an interesting and different take on the werewolf genre. But ultimately, the pacing of the movie just held the movie back from achieving greatness.

My rating of "Bloodthirsty" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.

What could have been...... This could have been special. Instead, it's just another dull Shudder Exclusive that isn't very good. Slow, tedious, predictable, and just not very good.

But once the story started to unfold, it seemed to start working with the characters through the characters to get somewhere and it did finally take us where it needed to go. Since it is a sort of psychogenic fugue type thing where the story dissolves from a big giant greyish obfuscated matter it could of been a little more taut with the material but like just in a few lil' areas. But regardless, it all worked out and the writing did its job and churned out something pretty nice. I would recommend it as a nice well-crafted story.

I really tried to like this movie but the story took so long to get going that I soon became bored. The constant singing in the recording studio could've been cut in half and there was no real body count or excitement I speak of.

I stayed with it in the hope of some werewolf action but the monsters were the actors with longer teeth and wigs. Pretty lame effects and not nearly enough action.

This couldn't be described as a horror and is more of a thriller.

I watched until the end but this was instantly forgettable. Very poor!