FrightFest review – Blood Secret
Writer-director Cameron Francis follows up the outstanding Cover with a more-or-less two-person drama set in an unremarkable house over the course of an evening – it’s a theatrical conceit of a shifting relationship with successive revelations and ups and downs of power and position, superbly acted by Katherine Lozon (who was in Cover) and Tiana Akers (new to the party). Madison (Akers) visits her college friend Anna (Lozon) to patch up their friendship after some upheavals, including the mystery departure of Anna’s husband Roman and her suspension from teaching after an incident with a ‘sociopath’ student. An alert on Madison’s phone reminds her that today’s the birthday of Nadine, who was another friend in college and died by drowning – casting a shadow over the friend group which has now shrunk to the two women, but also perhaps leaving a literal ghost whose influence becomes apparent as the bonding and bickering gets shriller and, eventually, more lethal.
Francis writes great dialogue and Lozon and Akers tear into it with relish – neither Anna nor Madison is exactly likeable and there’s a sense that they didn’t really like each other but somehow Nadine (Chelsea McLean) held them together … though not without lingering jealousies which have only escalated in the absence of the third woman. The film gets out of the house, into some woods still marked with witch-hippie signs from the 1970s and into near-subliminal flashbacks, but Francis builds a sense of claustrophobia. The extended conversation of the women, who are on various pills even before the wine starts flowing, is interrupted by a few random visitors, a food delivery guy called Steve-O (Garin Jones) who isn’t the Jackass presenter and a fussy neighbour het up about parking who delivers some ominous information along with a nagging rant.
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