Following its world premiere at Grimmfest in 2024 where it won Best Screenplay, Bleeding arrives on Screambox as the latest attempt to refresh the vampire genre. The film starts as a drama about Eric (John R. Howley), helping out Sean (Jasper Jones), who owes a lot of money to some dealers but loses the drugs he was given to sell. What makes this set-up different to other crime stories is that the “drug” is blood which, as explained by the opening text, “is a deadly and addictive opioid”.
Writer and director Andrew Bell has described Bleeding as “a story about vampires” but “the real monsters were there all along, preying on the young, feeding off the people that trusted them most”. As that statement suggests, the film often feels like a drama about drug addiction that uses horror as a springboard, and Bleeding fits in alongside movies like Habit and Martin where vampirism is firmly grounded in the real world rather than totally supernatural.
The film works best when fusing aspects of drama and horror, but this doesn’t really happen until about halfway through, and up to that point the story focuses on Sean and Eric’s dynamic as two young outcasts whose addictions get them into trouble that’s too big for them to handle. It’s a familiar narrative in these types of drama, and it’s conveyed by Bell through intentionally and unintentionally rough dialogue that makes the characters appear coarse and simple, but also requires them to explain each other’s back stories.
The addition of Sara proves that Bell has a good understanding of how effective horror can be.
Sara (Tori Wong), intrudes into this narrative, bringing with her the genre elements we’ve been waiting for as she shows more extreme signs of addiction in a movie where overdosing is represented by ‘turning.’ Although she and Eric had known each other before, he left her in her worst state, and as Sara devours her victims in yet another example of modern horror’s increasingly blurred line between vampires and zombies, an interesting question is raised about how much help Eric can reasonably offer her. The addition of Sara proves that Bell has a good understanding of how effective horror can be, but she feels underdeveloped with all of these signifiers put upon her character, and Wong does most of the work to make her seem like a person.
What makes things especially frustrating is that Bell does a solid job of creating the world around the central character drama, and although the film’s budget limits its abilities to fully realise the vision, its gestures towards a wider scope are interesting – particularly the social perceptions of blood addiction. Sara talks about blood addiction and how they’re “treating it like a disease” across the border, but there’s also an interesting wrinkle as other drugs like cannabis exist which aren’t as demonised – an early example of this disparity occurring when Sean’s dad shows Eric footage of someone who “turned”.
The expectations of a unique take on vampirism aren’t the primary focus of the filmmakers as it’s simply a tool Bell uses to tell a particular story, but unfortunately it’s one that I didn’t find entirely engaging. Rather than explore how blood addicts live in this hostile world, Bleeding narrows its focus to a specific example of drug smuggling, which results in the story becoming overly intricate, and the final act completely losing momentum – becoming relentlessly grim and uninteresting. For those with the patience to let a film drip-feed you its story there’s plenty to chew on as this is a solid starting point for an emerging filmmaker.
BLEEDING IS AVAILABLE NOW ON SCREAMBOX
