Bleed (2016)

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Quite simply the worst movie I have ever watched. I only got to the end of this drivel because I was sick in bed and lacked the energy to do anything about it. I think it made my condition worse.The plot is haphazard, barely presented before it all concludes. The acting is passable, but quite why any of the cast didn't walk off the set on the first day of filming eludes me. Talk about career suicide.There's some gore. Some minor jump-scares. That's all I can say in defense of this movie. The hillbilly-cult, ritual slaughter, helpful-but-scary ghost, missing child, abandoned burned-out prison, rescue butterflies, stolen baby plot is the sort of rubbish three teenage boys might scratch together in five minutes, each throwing their own stupid ideas into the mix without regard to coherence.Do the world a favor. Buy every copy of this movie you can get your hands on and burn them.

Mediocre, gory, and featuring a screenplay which is all over the place, this tells a tale of a young, expectant couple, their bonehead brother and his girlfriend, and another couple who all go searching the woods near their new home, in search of an old, abandoned prison, supposedly haunted. The first 45 minutes were decent enough, with some occasionally inspired camera work, and medium-acting skills on display, but after that, the filmmakers didn't know where to go with it, and the film becomes a series of filmed events, without a story to progress, and then the writers, began going down any clichéd path possible, but yet they never get anywhere, and there is no resolution to anything: black guy is the first to die, Charles Manson lookalike, hallucinations which may or may not be real, some sort of hillbilly cult in the woods who want the unborn child for unexplained reasons, then, what is possibly the second most over-used twist ending, they all die, for reasons which, again, are never explained.Without the barely legible closing credits, this film clocks in at about an hour and ten minutes.

I didn't completely dislike this film. In fact, especially at the beginning, I found it quite enjoyable. It did an excellent job at building up the suspense and the mystery, which really kept me invested, and some of the camera work, like with the cuts between visions, was very effective. But then some of the movie was just so odd. The background music in a couple scenes frankly did a disservice to what could have been some creepy or tense moments, and the chase scene as a whole was bizarre. I almost felt at some points that this film really could not decide what it wanted to be, which is a shame because it starts off so well, and this was really emphasized for me in some of the gorier scenes - intended to be scary and violent but kind of cheesy, in my opinion. The storyline is a little convoluted, but I did not have too much of a hard time keeping up because, as I said earlier, the beginning drew my attention well enough that I didn't end up paying only partial attention. Also, I think Chelsey Crisp and Brittany Ishibashi were especially phenomenal. I'll be keeping an eye out for any future work! All in all, a decent film! My feelings about it run on the extreme side: some parts made me REALLY like it, but others made me really dislike it, and I just don't have any middling opinions. Make of that what you will.

**SPOILER CONTAINED**"Bleed" did not disappoint--it was confusing from beginning to end. A husband and wife move out to the middle of nowhere. The husband is a doctor; the wife, a teacher. On the way home from grocery shopping, the wife has a flat tire and is helped out by a local law enforcement officer. He notices a mark on her neck. And then it gets real weird. The newlywed couple have invited another couple to join them in a celebration. A celebration of what the viewer never really finds out. The female is supposed to be clairvoyant, or something. She senses something in the house as soon as they arrive. The wife's brother and his "flavor-of-the-month" arrive uninvited. He and his girl are supposed to be in tune with the spirit world, although you'd never think they do anything but...well...you know. Through a dare, two couples and the husband (sans wife) decide to visit a burned down prison. Confused enough? "Bleed" just didn't cut the muster for me. It skips around so much. You never really know what the hell is going on. Questions abound with answers never being supplied. I could not really tell you what this was about. Oh, but everybody dies.Rated "R" for brief nudity, simulated sex, language, and violence.