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"Blood Trails" DVD
"Blood Trails"
is an excellent lesson in judging a book by its cover, or rather,
why you shouldn't engage in just such practices. Sure, they've
got these bloody gear / sawblade things on the cover art and the
first minute of footage just screams "torture porn!"
at the top of its merry little lungs, but when you wear past this
less than auspicious beginning, what you're left with is a halfway
decent package.
And what's in that
package is a woman getting hit on by a cop, ultimately having
a one-night-stand with him, and then breaking the news to her
boyfriend. It doesn't end well. And not in the way you think.
Anyway, without giving too much away, the cop is, as it turns
out, a total freaking psychopath (sound familiar?) who engages
on a nice long killing spree whilst trying to reunite with our
heroine.
On the plus side, when
the killing does get started, it gets started in a pretty wild
fashion. If you've ever wanted to see what a bicycle jump kick
to a man's throat would look like, then man, is "Blood Trails"
the movie you've been waiting for.
That and there's the
strangest pick-up attempt I've seen in recent memory; our psychopathic
cop picks up the heroine by--get this--writing his phone number
on her ARM. Does that actually work? Ladies out there, if you're
reading this and shaking your head in bafflement, you're not alone!
In fact, I'm inviting all my readers to tell me if this actually
makes sense. Ladies, if you'd actually call a guy who WROTE HIS
FREAKING PHONE NUMBER ON YOUR ARM, then email me at thevideostoreguy@columnist.com
and let me know that this isn't as stupid as it sounds.
But, one of the major
problems with "Blood Trails" is that it's trying its
damndest to be a slasher flick, but it has a teensy little body
count (tops out at like seven, two of which will be off camera),
and requires the patience of Job to get through as there won't
be any actual killing for almost a third of the movie.
Don't get me wrong--there's
some pretty nice tension buildup here, and some pretty fair cat-and-mouse
action, but there's just so much nothing going on between the
high points that it's hard to really get into "Blood Trails".
Worse, there's a LOT of mountain biking going on here, and footage
of people mountain biking is almost but not quite as boring as
actually mountain biking yourself. It's like watching golf.
And that, sadly, puts
"Blood Trails" down into the land of solid mediocrity.
The ending is kind
of a sludge, what with a whole lot of torture-porn-esque stuff
going on and some rather nonsensical sequences. Though at least
the victim gets a chance to strike back for a change.
The special features
include various audio options, English and Spanish subtitles,
and trailers for "Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the
Grave", "Ed Gein", "Silent Scream", "Open
Water 2: Adrift", and for some reason, "The Descent"
and even bigger blast from the past, "High Tension".
All in all, "Blood
Trails" was a pretty fair effort that just couldn't get itself
off the easy trail into something a little more challenging. Not
bad by any means, but there's a whole lot better out there.
Blood
Trails
**
DVD
Directed by Robert Krause
Written by Robert Krause, Florian Puchert
Starring Rebecca Palmer, Ben Price, Tom Frederic
Produced by Oliver Simon
R
2007
87 mins
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