Blood Creek

Blood Creek is a solid if unspectacular genre effort from Joel Schumacher, of all people. Touting a great premise and intriguing cast, the film moves at a breakneck pace after a short prologue that takes place just before WWII. Henry Cavill (Stardust, Tristan + Isolde) and Dominic Purcell (Gravedancers, Blade Trinity) are fine as brothers forced to battle some serious evil in an undead Nazi occult agent played by the always great Michael Fassbender (Eden Lake, Inglorious Basterds). In addition, Emma Booth (The Boys Are Back, Clubland) and Shea Wigham (Splinter, Tigerland) both do well enough in supporting roles. The only major problem with the movie is that it ends up being not as awesome as you would think it'd be. Granted, it's still pretty fun, but the setup leads you to believe something much more intense and epic is about to take place. The possibility of a sequel is set up without coming off as crass and the ending doesn't make you feel like you've wasted your time, like a lot of other horror movies succeed in doing. All the effects work and blood/gore are well done and there's a memorable scene involving Fassbender controlling zombie horses. Yeah, you read that right. Zombie horses. Anyway, with every decent film Schumacher makes, the bad taste of his Batman whoopsies seem further and further away. Almost...

I'm surprised at the lackluster ratings for this one. Joel Schumacher does have a reputation as a bit of a Hollywood hack (based chiefly on the abominable Batman Forever and Batman & Robin), but has actually turned out a surprising number of well-crafted films (Phone Booth, The Client, Flatliners, etc.) Thematically, Blood Creek is a departure even for him, but it's an excellent new spin on the usual horror-by-night formula.

Blood Creek starts out looking like a sequel to Texas Chainsaw Massacre (or the similarly named Australian film Wolf Creek). But it quickly veers off, taking us through a Night of the Living Dead zombie scenario, then spinning into the more gruesome supernatural elements of Hellboy. The shifts are somewhat disconcerting, but also highly entertaining. In hindsight, all the elements do hang together, so you won't feel cheated on a logical level.

No, this isn't a 'classic' film in any sense. But it's got good performances, excellent visual design, all the blood and gore you could ask for, and a whole bunch of solid action that could almost make a film on its own. I enjoyed the weird mix from end to end, and I can't see why any horror aficionado wouldn't.

I hadn't heard anything about this movie prior to today, but checking IMDb to see what the local cheap theater had to offer came up with this. Having no desire to see anything else that was playing, my wife and I decided to drop a couple bucks on it and we were not disappointed.

In general, I am not a fan of WW2, Holocaust, or Nazi related films simply due to the obvious nature of nearly every plot line related to them. Even Inglorious Basterds irritated me because of this. Thankfully, Blood Creek takes itself not very seriously and throws in lots of other random plot devices (Viking runes, zombies, the occult, the war in Iraq, etc.) that make little to no sense but serve the film well.

If you like crappy modern B style horror films (I saw another commenter mention Drag Me To Hell, which I also enjoyed more than just about any other "big" release I've seen this year), then you can't really go wrong here. Iffy acting, senseless plot, and bad CGI are not enough to defeat the high entertainment value of this fast-paced flick. If I had expectations for this, or had I paid $10 to see it, I would probably be pretty irritated. But if you can catch it at your cheapo second run theater, I can think of far worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

A friend raved about this movie, which I'd not seen nor heard of. A good cast which surprised me, and a possible attempt at a series. The idea was not wholly original, but I've seen it more on tv and comic books than in movie format. Not bad, some great visuals with the horses, and some good make-up effects. Not as good as I'd hoped from my friends recommendation, but enjoyable enough.

Joel Schumacher seems to have fallen. I didn't expect him to be doing low budget Horror thrillers anyway. But then again, the guy knows a bit about filmmaking, so this movie is pretty solid (and has a very good cast, not only Mr. Fassbender).

While it seems uncertain and not tonally correct at times, has a few script flaws here and there, it does flow quite nicely (if you let it and you're not interrupting it with questions that is). The story is kinda nice, the ending more or less predictable. Some nice scenes of gore and suspense. I guess if you don't have high expectation, it's the best way to watch the movie.