BLOOD BOUND ** USA 2019 Dir: Richard LeMay 96 mins
A family of witches have a ritual that they need to perform every 20 years if they are to keep their powers or die at the hands of a demon. This ritual requires a virgin, a baby and 4 human sacrifices to satisfy this demon. When 3 teenagers break into their house they find the qualities they are searching for in the young girl. She is raped and made to carry the resulting baby full term whilst her 2 companions, friend Brian (Justin A. Davis) and boyfriend Sean (Eric Nelsen) become the first sacrifices. Responsible for seeing this ritual through to completion and as his final initiation into witchhood is David (Ross Wellinger). As her rapist David is in charge of making sure the sure the girl, Kerry (Eden Brolin) keeps the baby, her friends are silenced and the ritual has its quota of bodies, however is David really ready for such responsibility? His family are keeping a close eye on him. This has a pretty ambitious storyline at its core and it tries really hard to pull it off successfully. I would like to say it manages to do so if were not for a few major drawbacks. The acting is pretty awful from the whole cast and there is quite alot of them all as bad as each other which is quite an achievement in itself. Although it is a bleak story it’s predictable and awkward. The effects are mostly practical though and aren’t too bad at all. The more it goes on the more confused it gets especially when the baby is born there seems to be a few large plot holes. They try to add some humour into the mix although I’m not entirely convinced it is intentional but how can you not giggle at lines like ” I’ve never had sex outside of my family” and sex scenes that last a matter of seconds??!! It describes itself as Rosemary’s Baby meets Drag Me To Hell which is a fair approximation I guess in the respect that it borrows ideas from both, with the unborn child being needed for another purpose and this ritual/curse thing the only difference being that it plays out like a teen drama more than anything but it does have quite a high body count. It starts off fairly promising if you can overlook the acting but does go a bit awry at times leaving you somewhat confused and not really giving a toss about any of the characters.
Review by Sarah Budd
