Co-directed by Tiago Guedes and Frederico Serra, Portuguese
import Bad Blood centers on the prominent
and respected Monteiro family, who inherits a beautiful home in the country,
nestled alongside a tiny village. Despite protests from his children and wife Helena
(Manuela Couto) — who have grown accustomed to the finer things that city life in
Lisbon has to offer, and believe the property should be sold for profit — stressed-out
patriarch Xavier (Adriano Luz) decides to uproot everyone and move to the new
house, hoping for a change and pleasant slowing of pace. The title tells us, of
course, that everything doesn’t turn all idyllic and carefree.

Almost immediately, the rather secular Monteiro family — eldest
daughter Sofia (Sara Carinhas) is even an unwed mother — learns that the quite
religious villagers nearby are held in the powerful and mysterious grip of
superstition and folklore. Soon, strange events begin occurring, and family is
forced to consider an alarming rumor running rampant throughout the village: that
by inheriting the house, they have also inherited a dark and menacing curse.

Praise for this sort of film will likely involve the dutiful
deployment of words like “atmospheric,” “moody” and “slow-burning,” but there
reaches a point where one has to call a spade a spade, and Bad Blood is on the other side of that line, unfortunately; it’s
merely boring. The acting is naturalistic, and across the board rather decent,
and there’s no cheating, glossy lean toward modernity within the film’s
production design; everything of is of a piece, and its locales carry the day.
Unfortunately, the film is shot, by cinematographer Vitor Estevao, in a rather
unappealing fashion, and a poor, grainy transfer and/or elements blown up from 16mm
only make matters worse. The film is being sold in the vein of recent Asian
chillers and/or something like Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, a category in which it most certainly does not fall.

Bad Blood comes
housed in a regular Amray case, presented in anamorphic widescreen with Dolby
digital 5.1 surround sound and DTS surround sound 5.1 audio tracks. Guedes and
Frederico Serra serve as the linchpins of a comprehensive, completely
subtitled, 30-minute making-of, though writer Rodirgo Guedes de Carvalho and
most of the principal cast is also interviewed. There’s a lot of talk about
here about the legends and beliefs of rural areas, including werewolf-like
creature Carrazeda de Anciães, and how this was distilled for the movie’s
screenplay. There’s also talk about M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village — a movie whose somewhat thematically similar sleepy
rhythms of rural menace outstrip this tale by a four-to-one pace — and the
movie’s premiere presentation at the 2006 edition of the Fantasporto Festival
in its native country. The film’s 90-second theatrical trailer and a gallery of
other Tartan previews are the only other supplemental extras. To order the film
via Amazon, click here;
to purchase the film via Half, click here. D (Movie) B (Disc)