Frightfest review – Here For Blood (2022)
For generations now, psychos in movies have been learning they’ve messed with the wrong baby-sitter … here, an early plot device has final girl type Phoebe (Joelle Farrow) stuck with a need to revise for a big exam on a night she’s accepted a suss babysitting gig in an out-of-the-way house and talking her genial hulk wrestler boyfriend Tom O’Bannon (Shawn Roberts) into subbing for her. While looking out for sweet but phlegmatic kid Grace (Maya Misaljevic, excellent), Tom has to deal with a succession of masked weirdoes who come to the front door, creep down from an altar in the attic, invade the kitchen or are plotting wicked violence in out-buildings.
Tom holds his own against creeps who take a surprising amount of punishment – one of the invaders takes more and more injuries in each scene, in a gorehound twist on the sort of running gag Blake Edwards used to work into the Pink Panther films – but at some point things escalate … Phoebe and her pals Christine (Samantha Helt) and Mike (Kelly Penner) turn up to add to the victim/hostage pool … some of the cultists flash red demon eyes … there’s a big gothic box door to another dimension in a barn … and it becomes obvious that supernatural evil is at work. But good ol’ Tom just keeps grappling, thumping, binding his wounds, determined to do the job he’s been paid for with pin money and pizza.
Scripted by James Roberts and directed by Daniel Turres, Here for Blood is a prime B picture – it’s built around surprisingly sweet turns from Roberts of Misaljevic, and otherwise throws a lot of horrible folk into a meat grinder, eliciting multiple ‘that’s gotta hurt!’ groan-takes from the audience, working in some connect-the-dots-level cosmic horror and casting Dee Snider as the voice of a severed head who does an Audrey II imitation and comes in surprisingly useful.
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