DIRECTED BY: Scooter Downey
FEATURING: Lance Henriksen, Sean Elliot
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s not weird. Or at least it’s not as weird as horror movies like Don’t Look Now , The Cabin in the Woods, or High Tension, which are genuinely disconcerting and have truly bizarre plot twists. But, this movie does have a surprisingly not-creepy incest subplot, so maybe that counts as a little weird…
COMMENTS: …when I say a not-creepy incest subplot, it’s because the siblings involved are just adoptive siblings. The protagonist of It’s in the Blood is October (Elliot) is one of them, and he is deeply psychologically disturbed. For instance, you can tell how many days have passed in the movie because October cuts a line into his shoulder every morning; judging from all the scars on his chest, he’s been doing this for quite a while. His adopted sister, Iris, is dead. Traumatically so: raped and murdered by the town’s creepy deputy sheriff. Both October and Russell (the father by blood to October and by adoption to Iris, played by Lance Henriksen) witnessed the murder, which gives them unresolved psychological issues to fail to communicate about. If you’re worried that I’m giving away a twist ending, I’m not: all of this is pretty firmly established in the first quarter of the movie. Where this movie aspires to weirdness is in the circumstances under which October and Russell re-establish their relationship. They go off on a hike together, only to be harried by a legion of faceless forest spirits. These spirits are eerie, menacing, and occasionally genuinely frightening, and there’s an attempt to connect them with the memories that haunt both men. Will father and son emerge from their ordeal physically and psychologically triumphant… or just dead? The film as a whole fails, though, in three main categories: as a horror movie it fails to deliver anything but the occasional quick thrill; as a family drama, it fails to connecting with the characters in the film to the point where the viewer really cares about their reconciliation; and as a weird movie, it fails to do more than scratch the surface of the bizarre.
It’s in the Blood is in the process of preparing a Video-on-Demand version but there is no firm release date yet—we will update this space when a date is confirmed. (UPDATE: released on 11/7).
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
DISCLOSURE: 366 Weird Movies was provided with a screener copy of It’s in the Blood by the production company.