BLOOD JUNKIE: The Right Kind Of Retro For The Slasher Set
If you're making a horror flick today, it's only natural to want to reclaim a piece of the genre's past in your work. After all, horror is a genre where a film that convincingly evokes the "old school" is automatically guaranteed instant street-cred with a significant part of the audience. However, pulling off such a feat involves more than attention to hairstyles, fashion and musical score: if a filmmaker leans too heavily on such contrivances and ignores real craftsmanship then the result will fail twice (as a horror film and as an homage).
Thankfully for horror fans, Blood Junkie negotiates this tightrope in an effective manner. It carefully evokes the independent efforts of horror's early-1980's era as it presents the story of Craig (Nick Sommer) and Teddy (Mike Johnston), a couple of high school-grad slackers looking to shake off the doldrums by "getting loaded and laid." To do so, Craig fast-talks Laura (Sarah Luther) and Rachel (Emily Treolo) into going on a camping trip at an old, abandoned campground where they will be guaranteed privacy for their boozing/sexing exploits.
Unfortunately, there are two problems that Craig and Teddy didn't foresee in their rush for forest-set bacchanalia. First off, they have to bring along Laura's oddball little brother Andy (Brady Cohen). The second problem is that the abandoned campground is located near the site of a vacant factory where a jump-suited, blood-drinking killer lurks. Boobs and bloodshed ensue, as well as a few surprises...The most impressive thing about Blood Junkie is its ability to play its genre-reclamation agenda with a straight face. Writer/director Drew Rosas sidesteps the temptation of making a big deal out of the film's retro trappings and instead concentrates on inhabiting the skin of an early 1980's horror flick. It's a very carefully studied homage - flashes of MTV-influenced editing, slasher flick plot-points, a delightfully cheap-sounding synth score - but it never strains for effect.Rosas also edited, did sound design and served as co-cinematographer and co-composer so the film has a uniquely handcrafted/fully-realized touch to it. Best of all, he understands the concept of brevity and keeps the film from wearing out its welcome by pacing it so it clocks in at a lean 72 minutes.
It also helps that the director is savvy enough to realize that the writing and acting have to work with the photography/editing/score to achieve a convincing retro effect. To pull this off, he creates characters that are amusing enough to hold the audience's interest and gets his actors to deliver deadpan-witty performances that can believably recreate the kind of pre-irony teenagers that existed in early 1980's horror flicks. As a result, the performances are funny but have a relaxed, natural quality to them: Sommers is a big scene-stealer as the self-styled leader of the group but Treolo also steals a few scenes as a girl with a valley girl-ish attitude of disinterest.All of these factors make Blood Junkie the rare horror homage that is satisfying whether you approach it as an homage or just watch it for grindhouse-style kicks. Hopefully, it can find an audience with the same people who snap up vintage slasher flicks on DVD because it delivers the same kind of cheap thrills - and it approximates the vibe of those past trash-classics in a way that will make the hardcore fan smile.(Note: you can find out more about this film by visiting its official site: http://bloodjunkiemovie.com/)