Book of Blood (2009)

I honestly don't know why Clive Barker didn't sue to get his name removed from this terrible disaster of a film, since by all reports it's nothing like his book. It's not because of bad acting; the actors are all at least decent in their parts. It's just that they have absolutely nothing to work with.The premise of the film is stated and restated, over and over again, as if it's a particularly difficult concept to grasp. What really is intolerable is the fact that it's repeated no less than three times within the last five minutes of the film. I'm fairly sure if we've lasted that long, it can either be assumed that we get it more than adequately, or it's far too late to try and drive it home.The story is so incoherent and ridiculous that things seem to just happen for the sake of having something to jazz up a few minutes, but they're so random and pointless that they utterly fail. Even nudity doesn't manage to spice this up. The multiple sex scenes -- which add absolutely nothing whatsoever -- are quite a chore and quite a yawn. It's been quite some time that I've seen a film nudity couldn't help, but this one manages ably.Nothing about the story really makes sense. The characters are poorly-defined and unsympathetic, and things spring up randomly to try and backbuild what should have been established long before it's touched upon. The whole thing reads like a peek into a situation that is neither interesting nor compelling, and it ends up a massive waste of time. The framing story is tied in and becomes even more bizarre and less suited to the rest of the film, but by the time this is made clear, it's too late. You've already watched the rest of this inane slog, you might as well see it through. Unfortunately, it's nothing new or interesting, and it's devoid of any of the (strangely) erotic elements that Barker typically tries to work into his writing. Instead, it's all dull as a beige room.The music is forgettable most of the time. Otherwise it ends up sounding out of place and distracting, which is easy to do since the scene you're watching won't be interesting enough to keep your attention. Unfortunately, whoever did the sound production made it another one of those films where you struggle to listen to the dialogue, but the effects and screams are ridiculously loud.The cinematography can be summed up in one word: grey. Everything is grey. Everyone is grey. Every event is grey, every effect is grey. It doesn't help to make an already incredibly boring affair any more interesting.Poor pacing, incoherent and dull script, and bad sound can't be helped by good actors, especially when they're limited by what they have to work with in the script. Don't waste your time on this one. It has some interesting concepts, which I can assume are the only things that were really taken from the source material, but it does nothing interesting with them. This might have worked decently as a short film, but it has no business pushing two hours of length with its story that nobody was waiting to hear.

Barker's story isn't flawed in the pace department, as some complain here. I didn't feel the plot dragged on. Rather, I found the characterization to be flawed.The student cheats his teacher by faking supernatural signs in the house. Where the hell did that come from? A totally unnecessary and puzzling plot-twist. However, much worse was Sophie Ward's totally inexplicable and illogical transformation from a normal woman to blood-sucking, amoral, brutal quasi-vampire. Just because a few insects landed on her face she made a 180 and turned into Satan's emissary? That was rather stupid. No explanation given, not even a hint. Suddenly she's the bad guy, period.No, Clive, landing a couple of insects on the character's face does NOT qualify as an explanation. Nice try, but no cigar.Was anyone truly surprised by that pathetic, predictable plot-twist involving Ward as being the person who hired the psychopathic killer? I saw that coming a mile away.And how the hell did she manage to fill that hole-riddled cottage with a pool of blood? Don't liquids leak through holes? So she established contact with the dead: fine. She reads their little stories: fine. But how does that suddenly turn her into an all-powerful witch? And since she is so powerful, why even bother to hire a killer?As for the dead, I have no clue what fascinating stories they might have had to tell the living. Perhaps about how bored they get in the after-life? How terrible the food is in Purgatory? About how dull it is to walk around like a zombie and stand in line for a chance to write down a few experiences on the skin of a living person? Did they get numbers when waiting in line? Did fights break out between the undead as they impatiently waited to cut his skin? The visuals offered of the crossroads of the Dead were very good, I thought, but I can't escape the nagging doubts that the dead were just a bunch of bored zombies who overvalued their own stories, to the point where they thought that a hot female teacher should read them from the skin of her hapless pupil.

I won't give any spoilers-- because that destroys the reason for watching. Usually, my past experience with Clive Barker adaptations has been rough and not-very-memorable.Other times, Ghost stories always seemed to involve some happy, Upscale yuppie family moving into some idyllic country house and then the Audience is supposed to thrill to the horror of the Perfect Little Yuppie Children being threatened by some ectoplasmic nasty. These formulations are so plastic, I might as well watch Casper the Friendly Ghost.This one, though it spawns from Clive Barker-- it does not make the usual thematic gestures that Hollywood counts as Horror Requirements: Country Mansion with a secret, Sweet beautiful Unsuspecting Yuppie Family Moving in (After all, No-one cares if Ghosts kill Ugly people!), disgustingly adorable sacchar-whiney uber-brats saving Mom and Dad from Pointless Horror. This one is DIFFERENT.Additionally, this one comes via a NON-US directorship production. This is not so much about the Horror of Ghosts. . .it's about the Rules by Which Ghosts Exist, and what happens when a Paranormal Investigator and her team follow-up on a gruesome death in a nondescript row house somewhere in England.The build-up to the climax is slow, be prepared for this. There is no Non-stop high-decibel Hollywood Scream & Splatter here. But there is personal interests and reasons that are explored on the part of each person on the team that makes for a macabre mix-up when the final doors are finally blown open. It's about Personal beliefs and teasingly low-level eroticism. So be aware-- this movie is NOT for kids.The end is. . . interesting.This movie is Girlfriend Friendly and She will find it interesting. And it goes well with a hot, lazy Summer Evening during the Weekend. Turn the Lights down and watch.

I am a huge Clive Barker fan, but this is a weak adaptation. It is hard to stretch a very short story into a full-length film. Still, this script could have maintained the intelligence of the story better and the direction could have communicated Barker's distressing world view better. I have three main gripes. First, the story's focus: the film turns the original story's dysfunctional mentor relationship between the older female researcher and the younger male medium into a full blown, treacly love story. Ugh! Second, the tone: many scenes feature little more than furtive glances, longing looks, or sudden, eruptive declarations of love/hatred, which makes the movie too often feel more like a telenovela or an episode of Red Shoe Diaries than a horror film.Third, the film's vision of the supernatural: in the short story, the "ghosts" gleefully wreak havoc on the living. In the film, they just want to be heard. As if this diminished characterization of the avenging spirits weren't cloying enough, the film features a very long parade of see-through CGI phantoms, all of whom look like they just marched over from Disney's Haunted Mansion: "Run to the light, Carol Anne. Mommy is in the light!" Despite my complaints, the film has flashes of true Barker-- the young girl being flayed as her parents helplessly watch, the creepy séance scenes (hey- wasn't that Pinhead?), and the film's framing story (where Jonas Armstrong gets the chance to show that he can indeed act). Also, the film makes great use of Edinburgh locations to create an unrelentingly bleak Barkeresque atmosphere. It also makes great use of Jonas Armstrong's sumptuous, lacerated, naked body to generate the kind of exquisitely wrong homoeroticism that is pure Barker.