Behold…the power of cheese–y movies filmed on a camcorder with
someone’s allowance money and on the strength of a script so ridiculous that I wouldn’t line a birdcage with it.
Truly, I dislike movies like these. You’d think that if you didn’t
have a very strong budget for things like special effects or cinematography or actual actors you’d just go hogwild on the script and get the very best one you could. But no, of course not. “Blood Reaper” is one more in a long string of poorly planned, poorly executed, and ultimately poorly realized movies that shouldn’t even have been produced.
So anyway, what we have here is the story of five good friends who went on a camping trip. I know, I know…we’re not five minutes in and already it sounds far too familiar for anyone’s taste. Think about how I felt when I put it in my DVD player. But these five good friends make the serious strategic blunder of setting up camp on the grave of one of history’s most horrifying serial killers. Which doesn’t make things any easier on them as somehow, the serial killer comes back to life somehow (yes, I know I said somehow twice–it’s that abrupt), and sets off to kill the five good friends with the temerity to camp on an unmarked grave.
Better yet, they’re there at just the right time. Amazingly, JUST the right time. We’re talking about a time so incredibly right that it defies coincidence. The killings always start up on a full moon during a leap year. And when are our good friends camping? On a night with a full moon. During a leap year.
Oh man….
It’s just one more slasher flick. Seriously…that’s all we’ve got
here. One more brick in an endless wall of slasher flicks where the killer is almost invincible, and all but a handful of principle characters die before the end, possibly so that a sequel can be shot featuring the same incredibly pointless concept.
Indeed, one of my own personal rules comes back to bite us all in our collective hind ends: “If Brinke Stevens appears anywhere within the movie, you may consider her as a vulture, circling endlessly above it all and marking clearly the presence of cinematic carrion close at hand.”
Check out the laughfest of a country music song around the twenty two minute mark! I can’t believe this! It’s a redeeming feature! This song is so damn funny that I can hardly think straight!
I hate to beat a dead horse–it gets nobody nowhere (the whipping AND the horse alike, ba DUM bum!)–but this is truly just one more slasher flick. The script is poorly written. The actors are stiff and wooden, barely performing their trite and cliche lines with anything resembling believability, and don’t even ASK about the quality of the special effects. Seriously, don’t ask. Because there’s no answer. There ARE no special effects.
The ending is a horribly executed mishmash of survival horror, escape attempts, last-ditch confrontations, several minutes of pointless screaming, flashbacks to events that happened only seconds prior, hopelessly ineffective combat maneuvers and killing.
And GUESS who the last survivor is! In an incredible twist ending that actually gave me just a moment of respect for “Blood Reaper”, the last survivor is someone you wouldn’t suspect in a million years.
The special features are nonexistent. Not a subtitle, deleted scene, trailer or audio option to be had on the whole disk.
All in all, if you’re into mindless, pointless slasher flicks for whatever the reason, be it mockery or sheer enjoyment of mindless bloodsport, then Blood Reaper is going to be exactly what you’re looking for.
For anyone else, just pass this one on by. Funny songs and surprise endings can’t redeem this one from the cinematic slag heap.
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