What do I do when I’m free? I pick the most unusual horror movies to watch- the ones where not a lot of people have even heard of. Something about watching really bad horror movies, helps me relax and I suppose it is because of the laughable plot or the atrocious acting.
Bleed, in my opinion wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The poster was mundane and it didn’t help that the few screenshots I found of the movie promised a very tedious viewing experience. I did have a few movies to choose from and eventually I decided to go for this one mainly because it was categorized as a horror and had a better rating than the other movies.
Anyway, I set down to watch the movie, expecting to be bored in the first scene itself and instead I was actually immediately hooked in the first scene itself. For me, when horror movies use the same old tired theme and dark filters and ominous music, I get bored because who wants to watch a cliched horror movie, right? The one where you can already guess the ending?
This movie makes all these things work- from sinister background music to dark filters….but only in the first half. The second half looks disjointed, as if the director was rushing off to end this movie already.
The movie begins with a scene from the past where a nine year old girl is hunted down because she has a mark on her hand and can apparently talk to ghosts. What happens to her is only revealed later on.
Present day- a pregnant woman hails down a sheriff to help her change her car tyre, only to receive a cryptic message about the people after seeing her birthmark. She brushes it off and we are invited to take a look into her private life as she sets up home with her husband.
They have friends over and along comes the woman’s laid back brother who brings his girlfriend with him. When the woman’s husband sees her giving money to her brother who is clearly a slacker, he sets about to prove that the brother, who claims to hunt ghosts, is just wasting his time and their money.
Turns out the town has a very creepy history about a prison that had burned down a couple of years ago. Now fallen into ruins and desecrated with graffiti, the husband, along with his friends and his brother-in-law and girlfriend, set about to look for ghosts.
Do they find one? Yes, yes they do.
Here’s where the story starts to wither and we are shown some haphazard scenes wherein the brother-in-law gets stabbed by his girlfriend, only to stop bleeding miraculously and inter-cut with will this is a scene where the pregnant woman gets into a car accident.
Somewhere along the lines, it is revealed that both brother and sister (who are actually twins), can see ghosts and were protected by ghosts in their childhood. There are also butterflies involved somehow which I suppose is supposed to be a symbol of some sort.
Needless to day, people start to die one by one, the pregnant woman is hunted by the law officers because of her birthmark and there are some cheap CGI effects thrown in that take away the tense mood of the movie.
Eventually everyone dies and the story behind the birthmark is never actually reasonably explained. In the climax, the woman goes into labor, gives birth to a stillborn and her acting midwife convinces the mother to kill herself to save the baby.
So she bleeds and the baby comes to life.
I had to actually pause and be with my thoughts after the movie was over and decided that the woman was a reincarnation of the girl who had been killed and buried. Or perhaps people with the mark are somehow connected?
The first part of the movie was indeed encouraging for any horror movie buff. The story flowed well, the plot was set up and the characters were settling nice enough into the story. The fact that all of them died toward the end, seemed too forced. They could have been saved, but in these kind of movies (ones where people purposely enter haunted places), showing evil win seems mandatory and regard for human life is insignificant.
Had it not been for the dismal second half, the movie would actually have been a decent watch.