Blood Harvest

I recently watched Blood Harvest (2023) on Prime. The storyline follows a family that moves back to their mom's hometown after she passes away. The children start unraveling details about their family's past that might be better left unknown. Those who aim to keep the skeletons in the closet soon intrude on the family's life.

Directed by Danny LeGare (Finders Keepers) and starring Jason London (Dazed and Confused), Robert LaSardo (The Mule), Eva Hamilton (Ruin Me), and Sheila Ball (By Deception), this movie had a classic setup with potential, thanks to well-selected settings and a strong cast. Unfortunately, the storyline never gains momentum, and the horror elements are limited. The intended intensity of the blurry facial sequences falls short, and the kill scenes are either scarce or nonexistent. The acting and dialogue are average and lack a natural feel. While the plot boasts numerous twists, turns, and solid character reveals, the ending doesn't deliver the intended dramatic impact.

In conclusion, Blood Harvest lacks authentic performances and sufficient horror elements to justify your time. I would rate this a 2/10 and recommend skipping it.

My first thought was, "Oh no, what did I do?" It was the title card. The first scene was fine enough, but the title card. It had this weird CGI blood that I think was supposed to be splattering but was instead just floating around. It looked like they were trying to make a Gushers snacks commercial using a 1997 IBM computer.

An early scene didn't have the lips matching the words. Either the area they were filming was too loud surrounding the set, or the actors weren't able to annunciate their words. Either way, you can tell they had to dub themselves over in post production, and it was really distracting.

Then in the next scene, the background noise changes depending on who is talking. Sometimes you hear bugs chirping. Sometimes you hear static. Sometimes you hear nothing. That continues through the rest of the movie, along with the change in tone and volume depending on who is talking. It becomes obvious that they just dub in all the sound from when some actors are doing their lines in post. It is really distracting.

I then realized that I had to be watching the wrong movie. There was no way this was the right Dark Harvest. I was right. I had searched Dark Harvest on Prime, and Blood Harvest of the same year also popped up and I had accidentally clicked on that.

Apparently Jason London is in it. I wouldn't know. I couldn't watch much of it. I only have so many nights that I get to stop, sit, and watch horror movies, and I wasn't taking up this night watching this movie to completion.

Not the best movie out there but definitely worth the watch.

I didn't know anything about it when I started the movie but it kind of surprised me, especially by today's standards.

Let's be honest, in my opinion most "horror" movies that came out the past couple of years weren't the best so I wasn't really sure about this one.

And yes, the plot has done before in multiple movies but, this one really took a different take on it, which I appreciate.

The acting could have been better but don't let that distract you from the story which is a deep dive into the siblings looking to dig up the past.

There are some very good and pretty disturbing scenes in there and I think it's definitely worth watching it.

I don't know what else these people were going for other than to make something to torture answers out of me. I don't know what they wanted, but I wanted to give it to them to make it stop.

The sound engineer is either incompetent or an evil genius. They recorded about 20 to 30 seconds of ambient outside noise that they played on loop during every scene where it is daytime (90% of the movie). That clicking bird on the same off rather pattern made me want to drive a spike through my head.

Everything is mixed so poorly. I constantly had to adjust the volume between scenes.

The cinematographer also needs to clean their camera lense. The scene where the daughter wonders around the house at night (a needed reprieve from the birds) had dirt on the lens. Inthought I had four deadly pixels on my TV for a minute.

The direction and acting.... did they tell these people to mumble? It's so bad that the AI generated subtitles on prime couldn't understand about 10% of it.

Oh, and the story. Done before. Boring.

Don't give them the view unless you need the detonation code from your enemy.