If you are hopelessly devoted to home invasion films, even movies like Kristy (blog here), which do very little more than duplicate the plot of The Strangers in a different setting, then you’ll probably think The Blood Lands is another masterpiece of horror.
For the rest of us, this movie is so insulting I’m going to spoil it to save you from watching it, which would only exacerbate your growing concerns about the future of horror.
Pollyanna McIntosh (The Woman, Offspring, Let Us Prey) and Lee Williams (of the gay “werewolf” film The Wolves of Kromer) play a British couple that comes to live in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere in Scotland. Take note—the realtor makes a vague reference to a history of war between Brits and Scots.
After an effective slow-burn of the couple settling in, and Pollyanna being spooked a couple of times by some of the most common cheap scares (rogue pig, creepy kid, open door, etc.), the home invasion begins.
It’s so intense so immediately that one expects to be taken on a terrifying ride.
Since pig masks are all the rage in horror movies these days, we once again get a bunch of baddies running around in pig masks. Actually, we get a lot of running around, period. No home invasion cliché is spared (which is fine, since they work), and we are subjected to long, drawn out cat and mouse scenes of Pollyanna avoiding the pig heads after her husband goes missing.
The absolute best scene in this film is when Pollyanna just bashes the fuck out of the first pig head she encounters in order to rescue her husband, who is being held captive in a barn. After that, the couple does everything wrong, beginning with leaving every other pig head they encounter barely knocked out. At one point, the husband even lures them into a trap by literally calling out, “Over here!” Now, what the fuck bad guy would ever fall for that outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon? Seriously.
Needless to say, the husband and wife are eventually caught and have sacks put over their heads. And now for the huge slap in the face. BRACE YOURSELF. Despite the fact that they killed and maimed a handful of the pig heads, the couple regains consciousness to find they’ve simply been dumped in a park in England on a nice bright day. Meanwhile, the pig heads turn out to be a bunch of clean-cut Scots who are now enjoying a barbecue at the house. That’s right. They just didn’t want Brits on their land. I AM NOT FUCKING KIDDING.
I’ll skip it. Thanks for the heads up.
DAMN.
And I really liked Pollyanna in LET US PREY. I guess that was a much better script.
Well, if you want a pretty good antidote, check out TOWER BLOCK.