Blood Vessel is one of those films you really want to like, but it's constantly trying to upset you in some way.
The film looks low-budget, but the production was fine, it was immersive enough and it was obvious that the people who made this film cared.
The premise was interesting, and even though the story itself was shallow and eventless, the production design and the Romanian mythology setting were enough to keep me invested up until the anticlimactic ending.
Creature designs were great, but the Strigoi themselves were so boring and incredibly non-menacing. They were never scary or dangerous, and they barely even do anything in the film. If you're paying homage to The Thing, and if your creatures can shapeshift - why not play around that, fool the viewer, make us guess. Why make the story so predictable and lifeless.
My biggest complaint is the characters though. They are very one-dimensional and mostly either annoying or straight-up obnoxious. They introduced a suspiciously diverse set of characters (in terms of their backgrounds), but besides a couple of good line exchanges, this never really comes into play. There is no one to root for, except for the Soviet guy probably, but again, he's a one-dimensional good-guy hero with no flaws. The woman's character was never a character. Other characters just try to beat each other in being the most unlikeable, but the Faraday character always wins.
I didn't really care about the goofs, like the Germans using a British ship, the German soldier locking himself up from inside but later when the Strigoi were locked there they needed to be unlocked from the outside, whatever...
I can appreciate the production quality and care put into the film, but it makes me really sad that in a film about a group of survivors I have absolutely no one I can care about.
The film looks low-budget, but the production was fine, it was immersive enough and it was obvious that the people who made this film cared.
The premise was interesting, and even though the story itself was shallow and eventless, the production design and the Romanian mythology setting were enough to keep me invested up until the anticlimactic ending.
Creature designs were great, but the Strigoi themselves were so boring and incredibly non-menacing. They were never scary or dangerous, and they barely even do anything in the film. If you're paying homage to The Thing, and if your creatures can shapeshift - why not play around that, fool the viewer, make us guess. Why make the story so predictable and lifeless.
My biggest complaint is the characters though. They are very one-dimensional and mostly either annoying or straight-up obnoxious. They introduced a suspiciously diverse set of characters (in terms of their backgrounds), but besides a couple of good line exchanges, this never really comes into play. There is no one to root for, except for the Soviet guy probably, but again, he's a one-dimensional good-guy hero with no flaws. The woman's character was never a character. Other characters just try to beat each other in being the most unlikeable, but the Faraday character always wins.
I didn't really care about the goofs, like the Germans using a British ship, the German soldier locking himself up from inside but later when the Strigoi were locked there they needed to be unlocked from the outside, whatever...
I can appreciate the production quality and care put into the film, but it makes me really sad that in a film about a group of survivors I have absolutely no one I can care about.