This is a ballsy move, as this immediately splits your appeal between wrestling fans versus those who aren’t. Count me with the latter, as while I was aware of it, I never followed wrestling seriously. I was not the target audience for this picture. So I gritted my teeth and kept telling myself that the great They Live also had a Canadian wrestler as the lead and a long-a*s wrestling sequence in the middle of the movie. By the end, it made me grin my face off. Here For Blood is a thundering generator of cinematic fun in its purest form. It is an involuntary emotional reaction that bypasses intellectual review. In other words, it pumps as many gallons of mindless fun as it does fake blood.
Turres plays the movie screen like a percussion instrument, with the rhythmic impact of the images reverberating from the impulsive audience reactions. Not only do I want to see this again, I want to see it on bigger and bigger screens with the most people gathered together possible. Here For Blood fully belongs in the movie as an amusement park ride category of sensations. It is the kind of picture that theatrical audiences applaud at the end, even though the screen can’t hear them. Turres is delivering kicks like Joe Dante was in his heyday. Yeah, it’s that good.
“…it is fun for the whole family.”
Roberts kicks a*s as an a*s-kicking lead. He has excellent comic awareness of his size in the Kindergarten Cop-like humor derived from a big fellah babysitting. He is very warm and likable, which I wasn’t expecting as I am used to seeing him as a villain in the Resident Evil movies (Yes, I watch ’em. I watch ’em a lot). Any 10-year-old child would love to have him as a babysitter. This brings us to the strangest aspect of Here For Blood: it is fun for the whole family. The over-the-top gore effects, overseen by Carlos Henriques, seem to aim a specific frequency of yuckiness that would delight children ages eight and up. Mind, this is very gory, but it is a more comic splatter like Jackson perfected in Dead Alive. Also, any kid would love seeing so many wrestlers running around. That is, it is just as enjoyable for a parent on the exact same level to create a unique bonding opportunity with their child. Don’t come crying to me if your kids aren’t tough enough, but if they are, then there is going to be an hours-long conversation of “And how about the part when…”
I sure hope I get to see this in a theater, as it seems too good to trap inside your house or your phone. Once again, I never saw myself as the guy who would be praising this movie to the skies, but here we are. Here For Blood may possibly be the best horror comedy wrestling movie done yet. It’s a heart-pounding roundhouse punch of a good time.
"…a thundering generator of cinematic fun..."
