Stylistically, Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire gleefully straddle tones. One minute it’s pure slapstick practical splatter with exploding vampires, and quipping demons straight out of Sam Raimi’s work, and the next it tries to be gothic, bathed in moonlight and candle wax. The editing, frenetic and rhythmic, keeps the audience teetering between horror and absurdity. There’s a sequence involving a possessed mirror that feels like a lost Evil Dead outtake, followed by a moment of quiet pathos where Oliver discovers a letter from his father that reframes everything we’ve seen.
Cinematographer Timothy Moder gives the film the world in purples, fog, and hellish reds, while the sound design bathes everything in whispering chants and throbbing bass. The film’s practical effects, blood spurts, prosthetic fangs, and demonic transformations recall 1980s craftsmanship, favoring tangible gore over digital gloss.
Oliver and Lily stand in a fog-drenched forest as supernatural forces awaken in Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire.
“…gleefully straddle tones.”
The “haunted inheritance” trope is well-worn. But Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire compensates with attitude. This is “popcorn Horror,” where the food is actually being consumed on-screen. The film characters seem to have fun, which is important in this style, although the screenplay falls into the trap of people onscreen watching a film.
Non-sympathetic parental figures show up in the person of Oliver’s soccer coach, played by Tom McCarthy, who refuses to give him time away from the team and will do anything later to try and get him back. Additionally, in the opening, Oliver’s father, played by R. Michael Gull, whom he never knew, shows up and berates him for his choices. Rock music, a traditional form of rebellion, appears throughout the soundtrack in various styles. It climaxes with a dance sequence around a bonfire and s’mores. When Oliver mutters, “I should’ve just sold the house,” it lands both as a joke and as the cry to end all the haunted family home films before they start
At its core, Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire is about choice and corruption. The grimoire doesn’t merely unleash evil as it tests its readers. As Olivier makes a choice and the film characters turn into a version of The Lost Boys creature hunters, complete with a red headband as sported by Cory Feldman in that picture, the ambiguous ending sets up a sequel similar to Evil Dead II, where we get a hint of a confrontation to come. Bloodsuckers and the Grimoire is fun horror, not deep, even when it tries to be. It’s at its best poking fun at the 1980s and cautionary fable. Park your brain in a jar by the door.
"…about choice and corruption."
