31 Days of Halloween: Blood Fest

2018, Owen Egerton (Follow) -- Amazon

Eep, these write ups are getting away from me. A nasty bout of acid reflux meant a few nights of turning in early, and missing a few flicks. Life always interrupts. Also, our lack of planning for this year's run is starting to show through. Despite my intention on plowing through all our Downloads folder, as well as all that have shown up on the streaming services, I still find myself asking every night, "What do we watch tonight?" Nothing is jumping out anymore. Maybe I just need to do some more digging.

Well, this one kept showing up on the Recommendations on Amazon, so finally we relented, when in the mood for something on the lighter, comedic side. I am also somewhat fond of the meta aspect of horror movies that are about the horror movie industry. While in contradiction, I am not that fond of the stereotypical productions spawned from the horror movie industry. Sure, the spectacle and the fandom are fun, with their costumes and exuberance, but most of the cliches (extreme gore, torture porn) they stereotypically gravitate towards just bug me. I prefer Under the Shadow, as a production of horror movie culture, than Chucky. But when it gets all meta, when the fandom is the fiction depicted, I kind of like it.

Also, Jacob Batalon is in it.

Blood Fest is a horror movie festival, sort of a Lilith Fair meets Disney Land, but for all the schlock of horror movie fandom. Dax (Robbie Kay, Sleepy Hollow) is really REALLY excited to go to it, despite his dad's misgivings, which are warranted, considering Dax's mom was killed in front of him when he was a child, by one of Dad's patients, who had been inspired by a horror movie. Instead of running away, Dax has embraced his mom's love of horror movies. Dad (Tate Donovan, The O.C.) does derail Dax's plans to attend, by cutting up his pass but Dax, along with his best friend Krill (Jacob Batalon, Reginald the Vampire) and coworker (love interest, duh; also, they work at a video store?!?!) Sam (Seychelle Gabriel, Falling Skies), figure out a way to attend.

But things don't go as planned. Apparently the organizer, a well known horror movie fan, has other ideas on what to do with hundreds of horror movie fans, i.e. lock them all inside with a bunch of hired slashers, a Cabin in the Woods style BTS control room, and a bunch of tech with which to recreate a bunch of horror movie tropes. So, while killing off everyone, he films it all, hoping to make the best film of his career. Part of me says this would have been better produced as a Found Footage, so we could see the movie, as if Blood Fest was the movie he was making, but instead, we just get a low grade comedy gore fest.

Rather than trying to stay as grounded as much as it could, the movie doubles down on the silliness. The director has tech that can literally raise the dead, providing him real zombie munchers and fabricated vampires. The rest of the "monsters" seem to be run of the mill slasher tropes, I guess representing the director's primary form of antagonist. The main characters run from everyone and everything, attesting to following the "rules" of horror movies (without going too deeply into said trope), but eventually (as expected) most are killed off, including Krill (pout). Alas the climax of the movie was completely expected, and rather a let down, but again entirely on point for this level of meta horror movie.