Here for Blood
Holding down three jobs and cramming for college exams, Phoebe needs a night off; her boyfriend Tom the master of the square ring in his tight tight short shorts but paid an insulting $20 by the promoter for whom he sweats and takes bruises, she asks him to stand in for her on babysitting duty for one night on the promise she will be along later to take over her assigned duties.
Despite their shock at finding a hulking wrestler on the door of their nice home on the outskirts of town adorned with motivational phrases painted on antique wooden boards hung on beige walls, Grace’s parents duly give Tom pizza money and tell him there are fresh cookies in the kitchen as they leave, the night starting smoothly until the masked members of a killer cult arrive intent on taking Grace as a human sacrifice.
Shot in Ontario on a budget raised largely by investment from local businesses, Here for Blood enjoyed a raucous international premiere at FrightFest at Glasgow Film Festival, directed by Daniel Turres from a script by his friend James Roberts and featuring entirely practical effects as the proposed kidnapping turns from smoothly planned operation to bloody siege, babysitter Shawn Roberts the wall of muscle between them and their goal.
With Joelle Farrow as Phoebe, late to the party and horrified at what she finds but duly finding herself in the zone when she finally arms herself with a frying pan, The Boys’ Maya Misaljevic is Grace, bright and confident, with Tara Spencer-Nairn and Michael Therriault as her typical aspirational suburban mom and stepdad and the various cult members played by wrestlers experienced in taking and giving a hit, not to mention taking a fall.
Dressed in leather and studs and descending from their attic layer decorated in a style contrasting with the rest of the house, torn pages, blood, candles and a hungry emaciated skull voiced by Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, some are sculpted muscle men in masks of Grecian perfection, beautiful and deadly, while others are simply freaks destined for a sizzling hot-plate interface.
Phoebe and Tom finding out the hard way that parenting and babysitting are very different challenges, particularly when faced with a supernatural death cult of perverts intent on human sacrifice, Here for Blood is predictably unrestrained, a crowd-pleasing blast of over-the-top violence and bodily violations, though on the whole circumspect in its use of profanity lest young Grace overhear from where she is sequestered in the locked bathroom clutching a paring knife.
The Glasgow Film Festival has now concluded
