@TigersMS78 reviews…
How much you like or hate Blood Punch depends on how willing you are to just go with what happens, it has an off kilter sense of humour, that goes from quirky to gallows and back again all within the space of five minutes. This will put some people right off and some won’t find it funny at all and in fact will downright hate it. For those that find the weird balance to their tastes, well you’ve found yourselves a little gem. As for this reviewer I’m kind of stuck in the middle.
Blood Punch tells the story of Milton who is in a meth rehab centre who is headhunted by another rehab patient or more aptly a girl posing as patient, Skyler, to cook up a big batch of meth for her and her nuts boyfriend Russell. (Now before you say Breaking Bad – I haven’t seen one single minute of the show, so the names and similar situations really meant nothing to me) They go to a secluded cabin and a riff on Groundhog Day begins.
Our main trio Milo Cawthorne, Olivia Tennet and Ari Boyland all work very well together, bringing their characters to a space that allows them to be develop despite not being given much by the script to develop with. Boyland plays Russell the psycho, complete nuts and dangerous also the boyfriend of Skyler (Olivia Tennet) who is aloof, just as weird and possibly just as dangerous. Milton (Milo Cawthorne) is the nerdy meth cook that ties them all together. For a film that plays a bit like a noir story, the three hander (for the most part) works well, it suffers when it tries to introduce more characters.
Director Madellaine Paxson does well given the limited budget, her style certainly works in the context of a comedy but less so during the more intense scenes. Writer Eddie Guzelian manages to throw in a whole bunch of twists and repeats which again work well within the context of the comedy not so much the horror part.
As twisted as the film becomes it really is a bit of mess by the end and overstays its welcome by a good fifteen minutes. I can’t recommend Blood Punch as it veers off the rails and the writing is too uneven, sometimes it was spot on black comedy, other times it seemingly just wanted to try and shock you and shock for its own sake is not shocking and only comes across as boring. I loved the idea of Blood Punch, just not the execution.
Ryan Morrissey-Smith
Twitter: @TigersMS78
Images courtesy of Justin Cook PR & IMDb
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