Director/co-writer Ben Floss opens horror feature Mega Blood Moon: The Freelancer with an evil doppelgänger (Aimi Tran) who has successfully killed her original going on to kill the puppy guarding the body. This tells you from jump where the narrative guardrails are: there aren’t any.
The Freelancer named Ben (played by Floss) is contracted to work at a company in an open warehouse facility that looks like a film workshop. He arrives for his last day of employment to a curiously empty office. After a video call with a typically snotty corporate drone named Jonathan (Beau Hogan), Ben spends the first part of his day goofing around the office and hanging out with a cat named Beans while he waits for the other employees.
As the day wears on, it becomes clear to Ben that something weird is happening. Lights begin to flicker and strange sounds emanate from various parts of the building. When he goes up to the roof he sees that the moon is hanging low in the blue sky, ominously enlarged, and has turned an angry, fiery red. As the weird occurrences ramp up, Ben notices that he’s no longer getting through to anyone on the phone. Mobile networks are down.
“…something weird is happening and the fiery red moon is enlarged, hanging low in the sky…”
Eventually one other person shows up: Richard (Liam Santa Cruz), another corporate zombie who doesn’t seem to give a s**t about anyone but himself. By the time Richard arrives, the company security guard (Zachary Taylor Heintz) has been dispatched by his own doppelgänger who appears out of nowhere. Richard grabs the guard’s revolver and heads into the building. He’s full of energetic hubris, but turns out to be as useless at survival as he was at being a co-worker.
The situation devolves into brutal chaos as Ben is attacked by his own doppelgänger who appears and comes after him like Michael Myers on meth. There’s not much use here for a traditional three-act script. The viewer is dropped into a scenario and must survive it, along with the character. If this was a role playing game, the DM would say “you’ve come to work on your last day. No one else is here. There’s a sound in the hallway. Roll for initiative.”
At this point, Mega Blood Moon: The Freelancer starts to feel like a freewheeling metaphor for the banal psychic violence of the workplace. Ben is losing control and fighting for his life at a place he thought he was done with and out the door. Another clever metaphor comes when the blood moon appears and wreaks its wild magic, Ben finds himself yanked away from his current time and place, and dumped somewhere else in the facility where he must quickly adapt and keep moving. While there are clearly workplace allegories woven throughout, the ideas still propel the action forward in the context of the relentless chase horror trope.
The budget was clearly little to nothing, but great ideas cleanly executed don’t need big dollars to provide thrills, chills, entertainment, and a cleverly snarky metaphor for the desire to flee a company and get away from the people who work there, including the version of yourself you made up to fit in.
"…great ideas cleanly executed don’t need big dollars to provide thrills and chills"
