The acclaimed film Skullen is often praised for its originality and directional creativity. It stars Conner and his brother Michael as players who have apparently been so much affected by their Father’s troubles that they are unable to function in life normally. However, at the same time, these players indulged in violence, with Moira soaked in murders and blood throughout the film. As Permadeath ends with Faari having a bit of hope, Skullen opens a deep cut because of how it begins.
On the other hand, there is Samantha (Taryn Manning, The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, Every Last One of Them), the sister of the killer who finds him, and administers some drugs to him so that he can take him back home to take care of his injuries. “I am a nurse now, Let me baby you.” This is followed by a time jump to a year later, and do you really need to ask what unfolds next?
There were too many questions that I wanted to ascribe credit to Director Ante Novakovic (Sanctioning Evil, American Fright Fest) and writers/actors James and Anthony Gaudioso, who had also worked with me in the past co-writing Medium and co-directing The Ghost and the Whale. I would have liked to be wrong, but they are the ones that came to my mind. Only one of them had “Why is Moira in the hospital, and what happened to her arm?”
And that’s about all the mystery we get from Bloodline Killer. Even though the film is preceded by an extensive period of composition, the author’s intention to pull off such unexpected features is ineffective. When Mora is in the thirtieth-fifth minute talking to her therapist sitting in front of Bruce Dern (The‘Burbs, Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch), there is a clear feeling that the story will unfold but it does not so there are no surprises for the rest of the film that is still over an hour long.
And what drove me up the wall even further is that the script is full of ambiguity as if there were quite some jigsaw pieces to the puzzle that needed to be solved. We all are aware of the identity of the killer and the reasons that are provoking him to target Moira and her family, yet the Bloodline Killer attempts to throw us off, for the filmmakers apparently think the audience are dullards who won’t get what they are shown anyway.
For dinner, we instead arrive at the table too late and that too with too much of Connor being a dysfunctional jerk and his toupee-wearing brother working on a reconciliation with his ex–Montanna Gillis It would have been far easier if Lee just started his boring bloodless rampage right from the beginning, Lee begins his killing spree only after a lot and I mean a lot of time has passed. Moira certainly does find out what happened the very first time a body is retrieved, but the police, of course, are not willing to listen to anything she has to say. They repeatedly tell her he surely perished at her hands a year ago, even after some of them appear to have perished.
If one gets the feeling that it is an effort to create a similar series to Halloween, which one hasn’t been able to discern, then they are correct. It is a good template when making a slasher as well, though there are much worse templates as well. But in reality, the abysmal quality of this one makes people who are fans of slasher cinema wish they were substituting their sights on Busta Rhymes beating up Michael Myers instead in Halloween Resurrection.
At night an hour and forty-five minutes, Bloodline Killer spans way too much time for the level of entertainment it offers because there is nothing unique, jolting, or remotely fun at a smoking gun. Even the only potentially intruding positioning, the last bout with Lee is so poorly lit, that it is like viewing silhouettes drubbing for one another.
Bloodline Killer had such high expectations when joining the slasher faction, but that performance delights all expectations as it does every blunder in the category and goes on doing it. The only comfort I can offer is that there is no concern about this becoming a brand after this any motivation for follow-up is dead on arrival.
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