Gory greetings horroryearbook alumni! Welcome to yet another edition of IT CAME FROM THE MAILBOX, an exciting new column where your old pal Brain Hammer reviews whatever random crap the good folks at horroryearbook decide to throw my way.
Actually, the good folks at horroryearbook had nothing to do with this one. This time around I was contacted directly by none other than the mastermind behind Down Twisted Productions himself - Sonny Fernandez. Apparently Sonny must have enjoyed my past reviews of his films (which you can check out here.) so much that he decided to send me another one to look at.
BLEED is the surreal story of a group of random high school kids that collectively wake up in the middle of the night and are compelled to meet at the same street corner at 3am. All of the kids are confused about why they all suddenly felt the urge to walk to the exact same place at the exact same time and spend some time bickering about it before dismissing it as a coincidence and leave. As the kids split up and begin walking home they encounter strange and demonic looking monsters that mumble gibberish and then savagely attack them.
The kids manage to fend off the attack and spend the rest of the night hiding out in a garage. The next morning, the real nightmare begins. The kids are shocked to discover that their parents and friends are now missing and that the entire town is completely deserted. No cars, no people: nothing. The monsters return when darkness falls and begin whittling away at the groups’ numbers. As the days and nights of horror stretch into weeks, the group discovers a few other survivors hiding out in town. One of them is a cute girl who had been using the abandoned shopping mall as a fort. The other is an odd boy who prefers solitude and quiet and has been watching the group the whole time from a distance.
Almost two months pass before rising tension in the group finally reaches a breaking point. The kids begin to share dark secrets from their pasts, and discover that they all share a common bond. They have all come close and personal with death in the past, and they all suffer from guilt and self loathing because of their actions. When the group finally discovers a possible way out of this bizarre alternate reality, another group of survivors makes their deadly presence known. This pack of ruthless gun-toting killers attack the kids, murder several of them, and then kidnap the slutty blonde of the group for some company. The last remaining members of the group must unleash their inner demons and become monsters themselves to make the bastards BLEED.
BLEED is truly an independent horror EPIC. This flick is so damn long it had to be split onto two discs! I have to give Sonny much credit for the overwhelming amount of creative energy that had to go into this production. As Sonny himself says during a brief interview that is included on the second disc, this is NO budget filmmaking. No professional actors, no fancy score, no CGI. Everything you see is real and is the product of his hard work and determination.
This actually reminded me a bit of one of those huge Stephen King mini-series that ABC used to present back in the day. The film takes a fair amount of time building up tension and getting to know the characters a bit before the action begins. Despite the lengthy running time and set up, the film never over stays its welcome or becomes tedious. The monsters are a bit silly looking, but the bloodshed (complete with some nice homemade squibs) was impressive. The less said about the acting the better, but no one in the film sucked bad enough to ruin the fun. I know that Sonny prides himself on his originality and deservedly so. This film in particular is pretty off the wall, and is full of monsters, madness, and hallucinations.
I consider Sonny Fernandez to be a breath of fresh air in a genre that is quickly dying from uninspired Saw ripoffs and lame remakes. You have to respect someone who finishes what he starts and actually makes new and interesting horror movies instead of just talking about them or rehashing old ideas. BLEED is not currently available for sale, but Sonny informed me that it will be available sometime in the upcoming months. In the meanwhile, you can check out www.unfilmable.com/bleed.html and http://www.myspace.com/sonnyfernandezfilms for more info on the film and the other projects that Sonny currently has in the works.
KEEP THE BLOOD FLOWING!!!
