Bloodline

Sandra (Francesca Faiella) and Marco (Marco Benevento) are journalists doing a story on drug dealing. When faulty equipment blows their surveillance of a gang of dealers, they are pulled from the story and assigned to cover the production of a pornographic film by a director who's becoming famous for his genre-bending productions that use a combination of amateurs and professional actors. They are by no means excited to cover this story, but they are given little choice.

Sandra has particular reasons not to want to cover this film. When she was a young girl, her twin sister Giulia and herself were attacked by the Surgeon, a psychopath who kidnapped people in order to surgically remove their organs. Sandra escaped when she was injured and Giulia acted as a diversion to allow her escape. Giulia was never seen again. The film is being shot in the same location as this attack.

On their first evening covering the film, Sandra and Marco hear rumours that the Surgeon has been sighted in the area, many years after his supposed death. It's not long before members of the crew start disappearing and the Surgeon seems to be the culprit. Sandra and Marco stumble upon his hideout … and the film takes a really odd turn.

"Bloodline" is a modern giallo, and like many modern takes on the genre, it reproduces a lot of the plot elements of the genre without reproducing the style. As such, it's an interesting, but not particularly rewarding film. I was prepared to write it off as a curiosity until a completely unexpected change in genre happened during the last third of the film. Without giving too much away, the last third is an escalating series of bizarre events that takes the film in genuinely unexpected directions. Worth a watch, if only for this last third.