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Cast: Sophie Ward, Jonas Armstrong, Paul Blair
Based on the writings of horror master Clive Barker, this creepy thriller centers on paranormal expert Mary Florescu and spiritual medium Simon McNeal, who band together to investigate the mysterious occurrences of an alleged haunted house. When hostile spirits begin to speak through Simon in a horrifying fashion, he and Mary discover that the house may be a crossroad of spiritual paths.
When it comes to Clive Barker you always know your in for something a little different from the normal horror you are use to seeing. Even if this was not written or directed by him you can still see that this comes from his writings. As the film opens you see Simon sitting in a diner eating, his head is cover with a hood to hide all the cuts on his face. Sitting some distance away is another man who tells someone on the phone that he has found him. After taking Simon in his car to a little cabin he tells him that his client is willing to pay big money for his skin. The man asks Simon to tell him his story in turn for a quick and painless death. As Simon begins to tell his story we are all taken back to the beginning to show just how he became this book of blood. This can be a very slow moving horror flick at times, I am not sure if this was done on purpose or not or even if they kept faithful to Barker's original material since I never read it but his influence is certainly here. To give anymore away about the film would just ruin it for any of you wanting and waiting to see it. All of the above pretty much covers the basics which is all you need, the rest best left to be seen. I got to say this was much better than I expected it to be, a gory horror flick with a ghost theme as well, combined together you get a "Hellraiser" kind of feeling here and to me that was a good thing. I said earlier the film was slow moving but I didn't mean that in a bad way, I liked the way the film took the time to tell the story and to flesh out the characters and their motives behind what was going on. As the film unfolds you find out that Simon's actions early on had a motive behind them and you also find out that Mary has a few secrets of her own locked away. All this was pretty suspenseful and backed by lots of gore as well as a few nicely done "scare" scenes made this one of the better horror flicks I have seen in some time. I am not sure why they never decided to try this in theaters but I think it could of done very well considering the amount of very bad horror films coming out nowadays. Book of Blood had everything in it that all you gore hounds will love but at the same time not just filling the whole movie with it, there is a pretty good story here even if it is straight forward it still keeps your attention until the next blood soaked scene comes along. My verdict is that if your a fan of horror you need to check this one out, as far as the genre goes this was a nice surprise and one I could watch a second time time and still enjoy it.
Released by Lions Gate Home Entertainment. **** Out Of *****