‘All the dead have stories…’
Some ungrateful losers have noticed that throughout this project, the range of score received by each film tends to hovered firmly around the 7.5 mark. The reason for this is that life is short, and grows shorter every day, and so I only tend to watch films chosen after extensive research. What is the Rotten Tomatoes score? Who’s the director? Does it feature Ben Affleck? When, and only when, these questions have been answered will I add a film to my watch list. Occasionally however, something slips through the net. This normally happens when something new comes out and I decide to take a punt on it without the emotional baggage that comes with reading other, better written, reviews. Which brings us to Books of Blood with its 20% tomatometer score and a generous 5.5 out of 10 on IMDB.
From the twisted mind of horror author Clive Barker (Candyman, Hellraiser) comes three interwoven tales of death and mayhem. The first entry finds a girl who runs away from home into the arms of a too-good-to-be-true elderly couple harbouring a dark secret. The second, more successful, story is a morality tale about a man who pretends he can commune with the dead – with disastrous consequences. Rounding off this latest horror anthology is some nonsense about a pair of gangsters trying to find a book. The conclusion links back to the beginning very much like the human centipede shitting into its own mouth.
To take anything written by Barker, a man known for producing wildly inventive stories, and turn it into something dull is actually quite an achievement. The cast, including Anna Friel and Yul Vazquez, do their best with the material they have been given, but in truth, there is little to work with here. This is very much horror-by-numbers, and also serves as a reminder of just how forgettable this genre can be when it’s not done properly.
I might be cranky because I’m now 25 days in to this hellish project. I might also be hungry. But watching Books of Blood is such a joyless experience that it actually made me angry. Please don’t waste your time.