Blessed Are the Children

Traci, a young troubled woman lives in Mississippi with her two best friends, she's being terrorized by her drunken ex-boyfriend, has issues with her mother and has fallen in love with a med student who does not return her affection beyond casual hook-ups. When she finds out that she is pregnant she makes the difficult decision to have an abortion. Upon leaving the abortion clinic she starts being stalked by a masked killer. Blessed Are the Children is a well crafted low budget slasher that gets the 80's look and feel right while tackling a sensitive subject like abortion with an open mind and open heart.

Ah, the good old American slasher! Films such as Halloween, Friday the 13th and Scream have scared us and inspired others to pick up the camera and give it a go themselves. The result is hundreds of slasher films that are mostly low to no budget, but nevertheless are passion projects of directors seeking to put on screen their own special vision of what a slasher should be. This film is yet another one of those passion projects.

"Blessed are the Children" is a 2016 horror slasher film written and directed by Chris Moore. Although this project was finished in 2016, it is just now getting wide-release distribution.

The film revolves around three young ladies, one of whom has recently had an abortion. While at the clinic she is freaked out by a guy in an angry baby mask, wearing a red sweatshirt and holding a sign that says, "God Hates You". After she finishes her appointment, she is then stalked by this person and those around around her start dying.

I say that this film is a passion project, because there certainly was next to no money behind it. The film itself is generic in it's quality and the cinematography is rather uninspired. There was an attempt at some blue and red lighting schemes, but honestly it didn't fit with the rest of the film. The pacing of the film was a bit slow and I feel that at 1 hour and 38 minutes, this film was at least 20 minutes too long. The editing didn't help either as there are some weird and abrupt cuts that don't seem to be an artistic choice. One of the ways I know I might appreciate the quality of a film is the sound design. A film with a great sound design can really transport you to the fictional world you're watching. However poor sound design is devastating. This film had some of the worst sound design I've heard this year. I think maybe the sound was just being captured off of the cameras being used, because humming noises, chewing sounds, cars in the background were more than a little distracting.

I also have to point out the writing and the acting. The writing is weak with conversations happening that feel so unnatural that it is painful to watch. The acting is below average and there wasn't a single character I liked and wanted to root for.

That said, the killer was decent, with a creepy and appropriate baby mask, although this is not an original design...they can be found at any Halloween shop. There is some fun gore here...a tongue cut, knife through the mouth, a throat slash and a head smashing, and that might be enough to save this film for some fans of the sub-genre, but sadly, not for me.

I'm also not sure if there are any sociopolitical statements being made here about the evil's of abortion. It didn't seem that it was being preachy at all and the abortion device was just a set piece the writer used to move his story forward.

If you like cheaply made slasher films (many do) then check this film out when it hits VOD on October 23rd. If you need a higher quality cinematic experience then you would do well to skip "Blessed are the Children".

1.5/10 Angry Baby Masks

I saw Blessed Are the Children at a local film festival a little while back and followed the film's page on Facebook soon after. A post a few weeks ago got me thinking about the film all over again and how much I enjoyed it. I guess it haunted me more than I realized.

Blessed tells the story of a young woman who's having an awful year, made even worse when she realizes she's pregnant. She decides she doesn't want to keep the baby, goes in for the abortion, and then finds herself stalked by creepy anti-abortion protesters in baby masks.

This could have been a run-of-the-mill slasher, but there's enough talent in front of and behind the camera to give it a certain gravitas most films of this type simply don't have. It's definitely low-budget (apparently shot for $1,000?), but it certainly doesn't feel amateur. For instance, the three female leads are perhaps some of the best written and acted horror film characters I've seen in a while. They're realistic, smart, funny, and wonderfully flawed as well. You can tell the creative team really loved these women.

Some might find the film a bit slow, but I was never bored. There's not any bloodshed until about 30-40 minutes into the film, but after that point, it rarely slows down again. I went in thinking that I'd know who'd live and who'd die, but by the last act, it really became a free for all and I found myself wonderfully surprised and thrown off guard on several occasions. The final shot is especially haunting and gasp-inducing.

As of now, this movie is, I guess, just playing festivals, but if it comes to one near you, check it out. I'm hoping it's released on DVD soon. It's one that'll stick with you.

After a disastrous breakup with her fiancee, a young woman trying to move on with her life finds her dating life and other personnel problems are interrupted by learning she's pregnant, and after having an abortion finds her and her friends followed by religious protestors hoping to purify their souls.

This was a pretty underwhelming if still enjoyable effort. Among the film's biggest issues is the low-budget nature that creeps up throughout here in the form of obvious indie mistakes. That there's plenty of scenes here focusing on glaring and obvious technical mistakes entered mostly around a conversation in the ice-cream parlor that's hilariously overdubbed with barely anything matching up to their lip=movements or reactions which becomes distracting as it carries on. Some of the other scenes, from the lighting on the various killer lurking in the background which is completely out-of-touch to the flimsy props used for the gore scenes, look completely fake and obvious. As well, there's a decidedly noticeable and obvious misstep with film in how it treats the faceless killers. They have no real motive or backstory here to garget this group specifically since there's nothing about how they fall in line with this rationale of thinking if the entire purpose is o help ease the burden of perceived sinners. Not only that, but there's also no excuse for them borrowing tactics and tricks from numerous other films in the past trying to make it seem like homages instead of logical tactics employed for this fictional war they're enacting and their general sloppiness committing these crimes with no one noticing anything or that they've gone missing is all highly unlikely. The last flaw here is the terrible and off-putting pace that drags this out way too long for its good. That manages to come about through several matters, such as overlong conversations and even some of the stalking scenes on display to go overboard with having too much going on. Other scenes come off as unnecessary and come off as even more obvious padding to stretch it out. These are what hold this one down while there are some rather enjoyable elements here which is pretty easy to figure out. The film manages to get its best work out of the traditional stalking done by the killers, wearing some chilling infant-like masks that have quite an impression beyond their propensity to sneak out of the shadows with their victims unknowing. The main stalking setpiece comes about in the final half where a series of scenes intertwined throughout the girls' house manages to offer up both kinds of slasher fun where there's both unaware ambushes and prolonged stalking and chasing which gets fun and chilling in equal measures. Armed alongside the bloody kills, it has enough to like here to lift this one up somewhat over the negatives.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Language and Graphic Violence.

My friends said I should check this one out and I have to be honest - I didn't know what to expect. The concept sounded potentially interesting, but the trailers didn't do too much for me. I'm grateful that I did, because Blessed Are the Children might be one of the more interesting low/no-budget slashers I've seen in at least a decade.

Granted, this won't be everyone's cup of tea, but there's a lot more to unpack here than most straight to video slasher flicks and I admire the filmmakers for trying something new and going to places most films wouldn't.

Let's start with the characters - they're terrific. It's been a long time since I've seen three leads this well developed and defined. There's Traci - the mopey one whose father just died right before her wedding to an abusive person named Ben who, apparently, threw her pets at a wall while drunk. Eager to get back into the dating scene, she's become a friend with benefits for John, a self-absorbed med student, who might just as bad as Ben. She then finds out that she's pregnant (by who, it's never said) and she decides to get an abortion. In her corner are friends Mandy - a sassy lesbian hairdresser and Erin - a shy, awkward virgin.

After Traci's abortion, she starts noticing creepy baby-masked people stalking her and her friends and the body count starts adding up. A lot of these murder scenes are staged with a god degree of panache and even a fair amount of suspense (something a lot of low budget filmmakers forget about). Some gore effects are better than others, but there should be enough to please the gore hounds among us. Thankfully, the kill order is super surprising and hard to expect. I did gasp a few times when some of my favorite characters were taken out abruptly. It certainly never feels safe and I love that.

As for the flaws...well, there are a few. I think it could have shaved a few minutes off here and there. There's a character from Traci's past who shows up and we're treated to an overlong scene in a restroom where we start to discover that this woman is lying about what a happy life she has as a young mother. The writing isn't bad and it could be argued that this scene helps inform Traci's choice to get the abortion, but it feels like it belongs in a different movie, especially thanks to an incredibly over the top performance by the girl playing Traci's friend. There's also a really bad instance of dubbing/ADR that feels like a weird Italian horror movie as well as several weird sound issues throughout. That stuff doesn't bother me as much as some people, because I could always understand everyone fine even if it wasn't always the cleanest or best sound.

Flaws aside, Blessed Are the Children has its heart in the right place and it's super entertaining and memorable addition to the slasher subgenre.