Blood Paradise tells the story of a crime novelist who is sent, by her publisher, to the Swedish countryside to try to regain inspiration after her latest novel flopped. She soon finds that Swedish farm folk are weird as shit and dangerous to boot. Her weekend getaway quickly turns into a fight for survival. I learned a couple lessons from this movie. First, taking a vacation on a stranger’s farm is a stupid fucking idea. More useful to me, though, is that I don’t think Euro-horror is for me. Maybe their version of weird and ours are really that different.
                Look, I’m not saying that Blood Paradisewas a bad movie. It wasn’t. It was a beautifully shot slow burner with strong performances across the board.  The sparing use of practical effects was pretty decent and the premise was kinda cool; I have definitely seen worse. The atmosphere is crazy in this film; from about twenty minutes In until the credits roll the tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The real saving grace, though, was the female lead, Andrea Winter. There’s something about her that is absolutely captivating and her performance in this film was spot on.
                The body count on this one is pretty low and, for the second goddamned day in a fucking row I might add, the one person I want to see die in this whole fucking movie lived. Ya know, I think that if you’re writing a horror flick and you’ve got a character that is a complete and utter cunt and they aren’t the protagonist or the antagonist, you should whack them by the end of the film. Not make them super happy and let them literally ride off into the goddamned sunset. But whatever, man, that’s just me.
                I honestly think that I would have enjoyed this film a lot more if the promotional material I had seen, including the trailer, looked like a BDSM murderfest/revenge film: something like Last House on the Left meets the kind of porn that you have to actually pay for. The shit hits the fan in Blood Paradisein a manner that matches the rest of the film: slowly. By then end of the film, it’s all pretty much wrapped up and we know how it’s going to end but we don’t get to see what I feel would have been a glorious climax complete with hammer bludgeoning.  Instead, the ultimate ending is left to the imagination. There’s a lot of that in this movie.
                All in all, would I recommend this movie? Maybe, man, it really depends. Do you like really artsy films that take themselves very seriously? If so, this one is for you. Like I said, it’s not a bad movie at all it just wasn’t my thing. If artsy Euro-horror his your thing, definitely give this one a watch. You’ll dig it. I honestly just didn’t get it.

 

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