Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire is horror cinema that channels the pulp spirit of Evil Dead II and The Lost Boys. It’s a supernatural horror film that refuses to take itself too seriously, even when it’s trying to. Director and writer Brian Klewin gives the audience a messy film showing the love for the late eighties rebellion horror themes about cursed heritage, dark magic, and the monsters we carry within.
At the story’s center is Oliver (Siddhartha Rajan), a soccer player yet weary college senior on scholarship who inherits his estranged father’s remote home in the woods. This is a classic horror set-up that immediately signals isolation, mystery, and the lingering shadow of family trauma. When Oliver arrives at the decaying property, he’s less the curious scholar and more the disaffected young man, burdened with resentment and confusion about the father who abandoned him. He sits at various moments confessing to his girlfriend Lily (Julia Musolino) about this very fact. The disaffected youth who inherit what turns out to be hell. It’s a familiar foundation, but it works.
A vampiric kiss turns deadly in this fiery, intimate moment from Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire.
“At the story’s center is Oliver… who inherits his estranged father’s remote home in the woods.”
Inside that creaking house lies a grimoire, a book that looks like the Book of Flesh from The Evil Dead series that hums with demonic power, sealed away in a trunk. Once opened, it becomes it allows the reader to cast spells and create supernatural chaos, summoning witches, vampires, and a devil. What follows is a series of limited practical effects of blood, magic, and metamorphosis as Oliver must battle not only external monsters but also the twisted legacy.
The characters in Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire are styled from the 1980s. Oliver plays the reluctant hero, skeptical yet curious. His girlfriend’s brother, Liam (Will Nicholson), a fun-loving guy, along with his friend Trevor (Bobby Izumikawa), provide comic relief with age jokes and remarks about getting ‘high’. Lily, the non-male mortal counterpoint, is a nod to the genre’s long tradition of grounding male chaos in female wisdom, as she, once a supernatural figure, knows more about the old legends than she lets on.
"…about choice and corruption."
