Looking back at Joel Schumacher's Blood Creek

"At the start of World War II, a German family, the Wollners, who are based in rural Maryland, agree to take in Professor Richard Wirth (Michael Fassbender), a Nazi scientist who is described to the family as a visiting scholar. Desperate for money, they agree to host him, unaware that the real reason he's there has to do with the very land they live on..."

After watching Blood Creek, the first thought that popped into my head was are you sure you read that correctly and this really is a Schumacher film? Now, this isn't because it was awful or because it was fantastic, but because it was so far away from anything he had done before.

This is a proper 'jump out and scare you' horror movie and, although he has touched the genre somewhat before with The Lost Boys, this was far from the tongue in cheek horror that was. The only sign of him anywhere was in the cinematography, which, in fairness, could have been the work of any other director who was inspired by his style.

Thankfully, style is all over this movie and it looks great on screen, with the noir flashbacks being perfectly slotted into the more modern parts of the film. In fact, I would go as far as to say that a lot of horror directors could take some hints and tips from this movie on how to make their final products look better.

Bloody Creek has more than just its looks to fall back on, with a script that actually is somewhat based in historical fact. Hitler had a strange fascination with the occult and wanted to find ways to harness it and use it for his own means. In reality, that never happened (that we know of), but just the idea alone is an interesting one and actually makes for a more unique premise than a lot of other horror movies that are out there.

Sadly, though, I think this movie really suffered from what I like to call horror movie overload. When the first Saw movie came out in 2003 and made a fortune, the world and its mother decided to jump onto the horror bandwagon, and thus, a slew of films were released trying to cash into this now lucrative market. Each of these films was more gory and overtly shocking than the last, and the term torture porn was born.

This new genre completely eclipsed the more traditional types of horror movies and that is why I, personally, think this movie didn't get the release or reaction it deserved.


The source is here