Blood Punch

After being caught cooking meth, a teen is sent to rehab. It is here that he meets a young beautiful girl who offers him a job. They go to a remote cabin with her boyfriend and third partner in their little drug scheme. Things go a little wrong for them when they begin to turn on each other. Things go from bad to worse when they find themselves caught in an old Native American curse. Now they must find a way to break free, or forever be dammed.

I was given this little indie flick by my uncle, who surprisingly sang its praises. So I went in with modest expectations and came out with a smile on my face, a sense of disappointment and a feeling of "I've seen this done better before".

Blood Punch has one aspect about the film that I would love to talk about, but feel that it would ruin the surprise. So I'm at odds here because this happens in the first act and the rest of the movie is wrapped around this plot device. It's nothing new or original, in fact it's been done to 'death'. Yet it's the inspired direction from Paxson that really gives Blood Punch a sense of accomplishment. The drama in the beginning takes a turn to black comedy once we arrive at the cabin. The film tries a balancing act and works for the most part, it's just that I didn't really find it too funny.

The genres this film mixes a fast and furious. There is even a action heavy shoot-out for crying out loud. This might make it seem like the film doesn't know what it wants to be, but I believe Paxson and crew knew exactly what they were doing here. An ode to some crazy Raimi/Coen Brothers hybrid of a film.

While interesting enough to keep my attention, bizarre enough for me to want to find out more. This is a film that I can't really see myself watching again anytime soon. I can't place my finger on it. The acting is serviceable to the story. The direction above what one can expect from a low-budget indie black comedy flick and the blood effects will make the horror fan smile. It simply feels like a precursor to something more, something bigger, something better down the road for the career of Paxson, if anything.

I saw this under-the-radar low-budget gem at the New Orleans Horror Film Festival a couple weeks back, where it pretty much blew myself and the entire packed house away and went on to walk away with that festival's Best Feature Film award.

It's such a difficult movie to describe, especially without giving too much away. The story begins as a classic Film Noir Love Triangle. Regular guy Milton is lured by the scorching femme fatale Skyler into a scheme to cook up a gargantuan batch of crystal meth for her psychotic corrupt cop boyfriend, Russell. You've seen this story many times. But just when you think you know exactly where the whole thing is going, it begins taking delightfully clever supernatural twists and turns that keep on coming and coming, right up until the end of the movie.

But unlike a lot of movies that try to take you on a ride like this one, the twists and surprises that keep unfolding here never feel forced or unmotivated. The movie is incredibly smart in its storytelling and direction and really respects the intelligence of its' audience, challenging them to put two and two together on their own rather than spoon-feeding them information. The three young actors who play the leads are also really impressive and convincingly carry the movie, keeping their characters grounded in reality and believable as real human beings, no matter what inexplicable chaos or craziness is berserking around them.

In some ways, some might consider this more of an art-house movie than pure horror, more early Cohen Brothers than Sam Raimi--but it somehow manages to maintain that sense of rollicking good fun and attitude that is definitely rooted in the very best tradition of low-budget horror flicks.

If you told me that a little movie like this could come along out of nowhere to seamlessly and successfully blend horror, film noir, and black comedy, I would have scoffed. But Blood Punch has made a believer out of me. See it if you can--highly recommended.

Breaking Bad never made murder this much fun! This innovative, intelligent thriller dark comedy with a dash of sci fi traps its characters in a never ending story full of false leads and false endings that takes the audience along for the ride. In a story that's nothing but twists, the audience finds itself trapped in the same puzzle as its characters, and even ways out are not what they seem.

The clever premise is misleadingly straightforward: Femme fatale Skyler gets herself sent to rehab to recruit a crystal meth cook, where she meets college boy chemistry student Milton who got busted for running his own meth lab. Skyler has her hands on 100 lbs of pseudoephedrine and has one day to make it into meth for a multimillion dollar payday. Well actually, her boyfriend Russell has the pseudo. And Russell's psychotic. With trust issues. But on the plus side, he has a plan to break them out and a secluded cabin for the cook. Yet it turns out that making the meth is easy. Getting back out and cashing in on the payday--that's the hard part, a dilemma the characters struggle endlessly to resolve.

What makes the storytelling so much fun is that the audience knows from the beginning that in this somewhat conventional storyline, nothing is what it seems, sharing in the characters' bewilderment to figure out what's really going on. The story starts on the morning of the cook, where Milton finds a video he's already made to explain to himself what's really going on. As he unravels the mystery of his own circumstances, the characters are trapped together and the audience is trapped with them.

Filmmakers Paxson (director) and Guzelian (writer) are a husband-and-wife team who've built their resumes in Los Angeles developing Disney entertainment. They wanted to make a movie of their own and for it to be a departure. They met the cast in New Zealand while filming a season of the Power Rangers. A group collaboration from the beginning, Guzelian wrote the story with input from Paxson, specifically for their New Zealand friends. Filmed in three locations around Los Angeles, the film has an indy feel, limited budget but professionally produced with substance (story and characters) over flash. Tennet plays Skyler with layers of subtlety, and Cawthorne portrays Milton's evolving confusion convincingly, a nerd who's made bad life decisions. Boyland can't quite portray Russell to be as deeply psychotic as he's supposed to be; the actor seems like just too nice of a guy. Special mention to Holloway who took the over-the-top Archer and even went beyond that.

Kind of tiresome time loop flick. This entire cast is from New Zealand (OK, there's one Australian), and it is obvious from the get-go. I had to look it up less than 10 minutes in, because it was so distracting. The girl who played Skyler was the worst offender of slipping into her native tongue. Here's an idea: Have a movie with New Zealand accents. Plenty of great movies come from New Zealand! I understand this was an American production, filmed in California... But why the entire cast has to do accents they're obviously uncomfortable with... It's baffling. Also, this movie serves as a 105-minute commercial for smoking. It's so ridiculous it becomes comical. They tried REAL hard to be stylish on what appears to be a shoestring budget. That gets an extra star.

This is a very well done time loop movie that I was pretty impressed with considering that they were obviously doing it on a budget. The acting is not up to hollywood par but the storytelling and other aspect of film making are pretty much there. I really love time loop movies and have seen a lot of them, and this is an especially good one. It is 1 hour and 45 minutes and in that time I felt like so much more time had gone by because so much happened in this movie. It is a very elaborate story that just keeps unfolding more and more and more as it goes on. I kept feeling like it was going to end soon and then checking to see how much time I had left. It is a very good story that keeps surprising you. It's also got a lot of entertaining killing in it, but it is not over-the top and ridiculous like a lot of b-movies. I'm giving this a good solid 7 here, and thats a hollywood rating, not a b-movie rating. If I was rating it in terms of b-movies it would be a 10. And if you love time loop movies its a must see.