Blood Relatives

Francis (Noah Segan) is a Jewish vampire. He drives a Plymouth Barracuda through the night on the highways of America. One night, Jane (Victoria Moroles) shows up claiming to be his teenage daughter. Her mother recently died and she used the internet to track him down.

The premise has some fun potential. It's a vampire movie, a father-daughter movie, and a road trip movie. It's a little odd that he insists on using Yiddish. It's supposed to be funny. In reality, it's funny for the first couple of times. Maybe if he's playing up being Jewish as a character. Instead, Jane calls him out for imitating The Fonz. I guess that's also Jewish, but they didn't make that joke. The humor is not developed enough. I'm not familiar with Segan. A better comedic presence would help. Moroles is pretty good as the sassy teen. This is a good premise, but it needs a bit more work.

First off regardless of a films subject or story, anything that's written, directed and starting the same person virtually never works out well. So why 'Blood Relatives' has a 96% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, is beyond me... especially after watching the film.

Now lets talk about 'Blood Relatives'. Its largely absent of both foley and diegetic sounds, mainly consisting of just 1-on-1 dialog and the occasional Yiddish(or punk rock) ditty. Which from my perspective, makes the film just feel hollow. The acting itself and cinematography weren't bad at all, and I did appreciate the on location filming over a studio/green-screen production.

However, 'Blood Relatives' ultimately failed to deliver any meaningful substance, I'd call it neither a comedy nor horror. And again, why it has one of the highest Tomato ratings, with 22 Fresh critic reviews, is beyond me. What I can tell you though, is the theme seems to be founded in a mutual consensus of finding the film "charming". The adjective shows up in almost all critic review synopsis'. IMHO that's just a passive-aggressive way of saying it was bad!

This was very poorly written and directed, and surprisingly, just bland and boring, and not funny at all. The concept was interesting, but it missed the mark in every other department. The two leads had zero chemistry, I'm sure mostly due to writer, director and lead actor Noah Segan's failure to direct himself and Victoria Moroles properly. The only really convincing actor was C. L. Simpson as Sylvie. Moroles' and Segan's dialogue also felt forced and convoluted, with Segan's occasional high-pitched voice squealing becoming cringe. The story had nothing much out of its basic narrative to offer - nothing really suspenseful or thrilling, or that wasn't cliched and predictable. For a comedy, we never laughed once. A decent effort for actor Segan to newly dabble in filmmaking, but maybe he wore too many hats on this one.

Right, well I sat down to watch the 2022 movie "Blood Relatives" because it was a movie that I hadn't already seen, but also because it was listed as a horror comedy.

Needless to say that I hadn't heard about this movie from writer and director Noah Segan prior to sitting down to watch it, so I didn't know what I was in for, aside from it being a vampire-based horror comedy.

And now having sat through the 88 minutes that the movie ran for, I must say that you have to look hard and long for a shred of comedy here. I didn't laugh once throughout the course of "Blood Relatives". Sure, there were elements hinting towards light comedy, but the movie never transitioned into being a comedy. So I feel somewhat cheated on that account, as I was expecting a proper horror comedy. Instead, I was given a horror drama laced with light elements of hints toward comedy.

While writer Noah Segan definitely was on to something here with the script and storyline for "Blood Relatives", then the movie sort of fell flat on the ground after a running start. Yeah, the movie was severely hindered by a really slow narrative without much of anything exciting, thrilling or fun happening. So you essentially just sit through a very slow paced roadtrip for two estranged vampire family members.

The acting performances in "Blood Relatives" was fair enough, but it was a shame that leading actor Noah Segan (actually the writer and director as well, duh!) and leading actress Victoria Moroles hadn't much solid contents to work with from the script that Noah Segan had compiled.

For a horror comedy then "Blood Relatives" was a flaccid and uneventful movie, and not a movie that I would recommend for fans of the horror comedy genre.

My rating of "Blood Relatives" lands on a three out of four stars, because the movie was rather uneventful and way too slow paced.

IN A NUTSHELL: A vampire's loner lifestyle is thrown into disarray when a teenager shows up claiming to be his daughter, and she's got the fangs to prove it. On a road trip across America's blacktops, they decide how to sink their teeth into family life.

The movie is both written and directed by Noah Segan. But wait, he also stars in it! That always impresses me, especially for a first-time director! I'm curious to see what else he has to say.

THINGS I LIKED: This unconventional road-trip flick features two vampires played by Noah Segan and Victoria Moroles.

Yiddish words like Mensch, "oy vay", "putz", and "schlep" are used.

It looked like the scenes were actually filmed on location, rather than on a green screen, which is always refreshing.

There is some humor to make the movie more playful and fun.

We get to watch an ancient vampire transition into a dad.

Some moral territory is covered as the vampires discuss the rights and wrongs of vampire life.

The film makes a statement on how we all just want to belong and know where we came from.

The filming and lighting were good, especially considering so many scenes took place at night.

THINGS I DIDN'T LIKE: It's a slow burn with a "meh" payoff.

Not all of the humor lands.

Not that much really "happens" to propel the movie into more than just a road trip film.

Fans of horror will be disappointed that there isn't more action.

TIPS FOR PARENTS: Lots of blood and some gore Profanity, including F-bombs Crude language and conversations

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