Subgenre Gluttons: Blood Fest (2018)
My dear readers, though I am one of the many Hauntedhouses who has prided themselves on their composure, there are times when my tolerance for certain society is pressed to its absolute limit. I consider myself patience personified but I cannot deny that some people, if I may invoke so colorful an expression, absolutely boil my biscuit. It is only hospitable, however, to take into consideration the feelings of others and I do my best to signal any irritation without making a scene. Whenever I feel such gross dissatisfaction with my company, I lean forward and readjust my spectacles just so. Perhaps it does not sound like much but believe me, the gesture often speaks volumes. I may also sweep my arm across the table, crying out “damn your eyes!” just loud enough to be heard over the crashing of china and the shattering of glassware. It really depends entirely on the circumstance.
Just the sort of thing Dr. Conway would object to
I fear I would be forced to resort to such measures if I were to find myself in conversation Dr. Conway (Tate Donavan). The good doctor seems, at the risk of seeming churlish, to be a person of limited imagination. What I mean to say is, the man fancies himself a notable mind in the field of psychology and yet he depends on the same tired hypotheses that have routinely plagued alarmist pamphlets and conservative television programs. Blaming horror films for real world examples of violence! Of all the overworked premisses! I realize I can hardly approach the subject objectively but I think the course of human history has provided ceaseless examples of carnage created without the aid of fiction.
This man, this father who is raising two children of his own, one of whom (Robbie Kay) delights in nothing more than the very genre he publicly reviles, this sorry excuse for an intellectual parades about the airwaves, polluting the public with his puritanical abuse. Of all the smug, sneering lunacy! Fie, I say! Fie upon his wasteful ignorance! At any rate, his son attends a horror festival featuring all manner of terrors that essentially turn out to be real and the attendees are assailed by zombies and vampires and killer clowns and and whatnot.
The Blood Fest business model is not particularly sustainable
Which is really a neat trick, if you put the old lemon to the matter. Putting all diatribes about censorious zealots aside, and believe me, it is a struggle on my part to do so, Blood Fest addresses a problem that has plagued brainy terror scribes since time immemorial -- how does one fit more horrors into their horror? Many less graceful solutions exist, ones that resolve both plot and title by slapping a “versus” between two familiar monstrosities. And then there are films such as Blood Fest, an elegant means of satisfying all types of subgenre gluttons in an economic 90 minute timeframe. And to top it off, stuffing all these frights into one slim package is sort of ironic, given Dr. Connor’s viewpoint and all. While audiences will still have to endure his presence and positions, the surrounding film is a good bit of fun.
Blood Fest runs 92 minutes and does not possess a certified rating in the United States.
