Blood for Irina

The only way to survive this thing is to hook up with your music player to replace or drown out the annoying music and sound effects. Promptly follow that up by going under the influence of something to make the boring, senseless images seem interesting or disappear altogether.

Almost everything is shot in slow motion to weird sound-effects and seems surrealistic. Language is mainly visual; appearing symbolic as if there is some deeper or other meaning to this crap. So there's almost no talking in it, which might be a blessing if I thought it could get worse. This thing (I refuse to call it a movie) is reminiscent of some dream sequences in regular movies. Except instead of lasting only a few seconds or a minute, it goes on irritatingly for more than an hour.

What is this "thing" about? Can't say, Reader. In order for me to tell you that I'd have to be able to understand rubbish. All I could gather (before I stuffed my player's earphones in my ear and nodded off) is that it's about a street walking vampire woman, partial to thick soled black boots, who resides in a dilapidated abandoned hotel. Usually on her nightly prowls (in slow motion to annoying off-beat melodramatic sound effects) she passes by a stoned-looking pink-haired prostitute. But one night, she changes her MO and stops and snuggles up to the prostitute. "She's lost like me", she says in a voice like an old cassette recording (more stupid effects), then takes her home. Reader, you only need to see 3 minutes of this thing to realize you f!!cked up. But on the off chance you still insist on viewing it after all I've said, at least arm yourself with your player and something to make you not see straight. You'll thank me. Love, Boloxxxi.

A surreal and dreamlike non traditional vampire film. I dug how she never sprouted fangs and you're left wondering whether being a vampire was all in her mind or perhaps an infection (as the vomiting suggested). I thought there was a definite nod to Martin in this regard. I've watched some painful shoestring budget flicks in my time but this definitely isn't one of them. After reading some of the scathing reviews I thought this would be an endurance test but instead I got one of the better independent horror films I've seen in awhile. Blood For Irina won't be for everyone. It's not a modern classic by any means but is a well crafted interesting film that I'm sure will find an appreciative audience.

The score really stood out (with the exception of the corny classical piece used in the title sequence) with it's great unnerving abrasive sounding parts for the tense moments. A decent score is a rarity in independent horror so this was a nice touch. The minimal dialogue really worked for me too. It kept the surreal vibe of the film going and didn't let the film fall into the trap of novice actors delivering clunky dialogue. Running just shy of 70 minutes Blood For Irina doesn't out stay it's welcome either. It's concise unlike a lot of lower budget flicks where the directors are to precious about their work to ditch unnecessary scenes that make their films drag. Nice cinematography too. I liked the unconventional shots like the sink scene and the figurative meaning in some of the establishing shots (like the shot of the exit sign).

Blood For Irina will alienate a lot of horror fans by perhaps being too "weird", slow burning and not having enough splatter or jump scares. There's some rough edges but this film shows the director has a lot of potential and is thinking outside of the square both stylistically and thematically. I'll be looking forward to seeing more of Chris Alexander's work. This was an ambitious film that knew it's limitations and worked well within them to deliver a solid directorial debut.

We are told that Chris Alexander's Blood for Irina is a portrait of 'three people living life on the fringe…trapped in a world of literal and figurative decay'. The credited inspirations are Herzog, Franco and Rollin but there is more going on here. With its intense focus on a woman's psychological and physical disintegration, its repeated images of blood and suffering and the almost spiritual concentration on close-ups this works as both chamber piece and meditation on a Passion. The Passion of Irina, if you like. We're in the company of Bergman and Dreyer.

There is a lot of Lynch here too – we think of the initial, hypnotic shots of smoke and fire in 'Wild at Heart' as we watch the swirling blood in water set to classical music, of 'Twin Peaks' as Irina draws back red curtains to reveal her city (her stage?), of 'Eraserhead' as we travel through her quiet, desolate urban/industrial landscape. But the most interesting reference to Lynch is surely the large stone resembling a human ear that lies in the lake next to an eerily staring baby doll. We think of 'Blue Velvet', of images of innocence in a 'strange world' of degradation, but this stone is also Alexander's original touch, an indication of the way we need not only to watch but to listen to this film. The stone and the doll are both partially submerged and as we look at them we reflect on the way in which all of the staring but essentially lifeless figures in this film appear to be strangely submerged, as if they are decaying bodies suspended in formaldehyde. When Irina stares at her first victim through a café window she could almost be looking into an urban fish tank. Equally, all the grim interaction and individual agony of the characters is made to sound submerged by Alexander's expressive, experimental and highly expressionistic score, as if we are listening to an ultrasound scan. The tragic significance of this particular sound is made poignantly clear in the closing moments of the film.

Alexander creates many moments of dark visual poetry. The motel's sign hovers in a cloudy night sky like a sad, sordid neon moon, a beacon of decay and death. The black blood running from Irina's mouth as she claims her prey is mirrored by the black water running from a drain mouth, creating an overwhelming sense of rot, erosion, putrescence and sickness. And in one brilliant shot, a close up of the chipped paintwork on the bottom of the door to Irina's room appears at first to be the outline of a cityscape filmed at sunset. It is the perfect image of Irina's world – everything reduced to this flaking point.

Alexander's microbudget film and his central character are similar beings. This is a fringe film, an outsider standing in a small room looking out at a city in which it might expect to pass almost unnoticed, finding only a few intense companions. Be one of them. Irina will give you a night you will not easily forget.