Here for Blood

I recently watched the Canadian film 🇨🇦 Here for Blood (2023) on Shudder. The story follows a professional wrestler who reluctantly agrees to cover a babysitting job for his girlfriend. What starts as a quiet night quickly turns into chaos when a group tries to kidnap the girl he's watching. From there, it's a wild ride of blood, guts, and gore.

Directed by Daniel Turres (Terry's Car Gets Stolen), the film stars Shawn Roberts (X-Men), Maya Misaljevic (Locke & Key), Joelle Farrow (Turkey Drop), and Jesse Buck (Nightmare Alley).

This movie was an absolute blast and has serious rewatch value. It's a self-aware horror comedy that embraces its over-the-top nature and delivers with style. The soundtrack is fantastic, and the script is packed with fun scenarios and clever references-including nods to Little Shop of Horrors and Scream. The kill scenes are especially impressive: elite throat slashes, creative gore, fun burn effects, and an awesome "he's not dead" moment that had me grinning.

While the ending didn't hit quite as hard as the rest of the film, it didn't take away from the overall entertainment.

In conclusion, Here for Blood is a fun, blood-soaked ride that's a worthwhile addition to the horror genre. I'd give it a solid 7/10 and highly recommend it to horror-comedy fans.

Sitting down to watch the 2022 comedy horror movie "Here for Blood" here in 2024 without ever having heard about it, I have to admit that I wasn't sure what I was in for. But with it being a horror comedy that I hadn't already seen, and my love of the horror genre, of course I had to give the movie a fair chance.

The storyline, written by James Roberts, is a pretty straightforward one. However, I have to say that it wasn't a particularly impressive storyline, and it was rather devoid of comedy, making it a weak horror comedy. I am sure that newcomers to the horror genre might enjoy "Here for Blood", but as a life-long horror fan, I have to say that writer James Roberts just didn't dazzle me with this script.

The movie starts out as a rather generic home-invasion movie, but takes a rather unexpected turn about halfway through, for better or worse.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, which was good, as I do like watching unfamiliar faces and talents on the screen. And the acting performances in "Here for Blood" were adequate. Nothing outstanding or overly memorable, mind you, but definitely adequate for a movie of this caliber.

The effects in the movie were good, and I did like the gore effects and the glowing eyes, those looked really great. And there was actually enough gore and visceral mayhem to keep an old gorehound like myself content, and that was definitely something that spoke well in favor of the movie and helped keeping it afloat.

While "Here for Blood" was watchable, it wasn't exactly a movie that tickled me the right places.

My rating of "Here for Blood" lands on a five out of ten stars.

I thought this film was quite well done for not being a big blockbuster. You know how professional wrestling sets up a physical conflict between bruisers and play acts the whole thing? That's kind of what we end up with here, as the lead character is supposed to be a wrestler, and some of the cult members attacking him are big muscular guys with outfits and masks. Same basic idea, but with knives and other instruments tossed in occasionally. And it's clearly planned this way, because if you think about the plot as is, it really makes no sense for the cultists to be extravagantly dressed athletes. Just go with it. Add in normal people in peril, a girlfriend with that fun Canadian twang where she says her owwws as ewwws (like when she talks "aboot" something), lots of gore, a wise beyond her years kid, some cheesy jokes, a screaming decapitated head and some occult mumbo jumbo, and now you're talking. Something about the every guy fighting off supernatural attackers while cracking lame jokes appeals to me, and it seems a lot more natural when it's a big guy who can take the hits instead of the typical scrawny (and, for some reason I don't understand, usually sexist) kid you're used to seeing in these movies. While this is not the best at any one thing, it has a fair amount of everything. Well, OK, fair warning, I guess not nudity, if that's a dealbreaker for you. But probably everything else you'd want out of a horror comedy is here.

In need of some extra money, a down-on-his-luck wrestler agrees to babysit his girlfriends' younger sister for the night while she studies for an upcoming exam, but when a deadly cult descends upon the house looking for blood he must put his fighting skills to the test to save everyone he cares for.

There's quite a lot to like with this feature. Among the brighter spots here is the film's wildly imaginative setup that provides this with a great opportunity for fun throughout. The main concept of him getting dragged into the babysitting gig is quite fun, making quite heavy use of the concept of him being a male trying to go through the act of babysitting a young girl. This gets brought up throughout the course of the film as his muscle-headed style and good-natured sense of duty conflicts with their more natural sense that try to explain what's going on as the situation spirals out of control involving the purpose behind the cult's appearance at the house and what they're actually doing there. It's all given a great comedic bent with the reactions, one-liners, and over-the-top nature of everything which all sets the film in motion rather well. This setup provides the kind of baseline starting point where the fun of the home invasion produces no shortage of high-energy confrontations. With that comedic bent still in full effect, the confrontations here with the initial members of the cult trying to sneak inside and take her without conflict but get interrupted by the wrestler putting his moves to the test in defending her. This continues with the added bodies being added to the fray as his friends arrive looking to end the night there and get drawn into the mix and then the parents that bring about all kinds of fun here with the series of twists they bring about which not only generates a slew of highly effective gore scenes for the numerous kills but also keeps the film going along as such a frenetic clip that it comes together incredibly well for a lot to like. There isn't much to dislike here but it does have some minor drawbacks. The main factor against the film is that it tends to introduce a few too many elements than it needs to for the type of story this is trying to be. The whole idea of the cult trying to gain immortality through the sacrifice is fine enough, but to constantly try to bring about the importance of the situation with a wise-cracking hero featuring supernatural healing powers just as much as the supernatural regeneration powers of the cult that tends to feel somewhat unnecessary. As well, with the film's heavy focus on the comedic touches not just in the reactions and quips being offered, some of them come off as being scripted rather than being genuine in-the-moment comments so the lessened tension isn't there at the wrong moments. These slight issues are all that keep it down.

Rated Unrated/R: Extreme Graphic Violence, Graphic Language, and children-in-jeopardy.

Here for Blood is a ton of fun. Shawn Roberts absolutely kills it with the awesome one liners while defending a house against a home invasion.

Tom (Roberts) is conned into babysitting by his girlfriend and thus starts the home invasion by a group of mask wearing killers.

The fun starts when Tom encounters the first man in a mask and kicks the loving junk out of him.

What makes this stand out from some other home invasion films is its absurdly funny humor, extremely creepy antagonists and awesomely over the top practical effects.

You find out that this home invasion is to possibly capture the little girl and anyone else is just dead meat. About a third of the way through you will probably guess the reasoning as to why they are doing it but it gets does have some twists and turns... especially when you figure out who is behind it.

Here for Blood is a lot of fun and Shawn Roberts really adds a lot with his cockiness and hilarious one liners through out the film. It also doesn't slow down at all. It's definitely worth watching if you like horror comedies.