The Bloodhound (2020) Somewhere between David Lynch and Yorgos Lanthimos (Review)

In a package of interviews, Patrick Picard, writer/director of the Bloodhound – the latest of Arrow Video’s celebrations of young indie darlings – presents an idea that many horror literature fans may baulk at – Edgar Allan Poe was at his best when setting up a mystery. He also goes on to say that the opening two pages of the Fall of the House of Usher got his creativity firing on all cylinders, and from that, he penned his feature debut. In it, a young man, Francis (Liam Aiken), visits a sickly friend he hasn’t seen in years, JP (Joe Adler), and weird, haunting things start happening. In Poe’s hands, or Corman’s for his legendary adaptations, this was a told in a massive gothic abode of never-ending passageways and cavernous halls. With Picard, this chamber horror takes place within a cool, hyper-modern inner-city domicile.

That’s as far as any comparisons to conventional horror voices could be stretched as the Bloodhound. If you’ve seen Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster, or any other pre-Oscar Yorgos Lanthimos film, you’ll know his style is one of the aloof oddballs with a pattern and rhythm of speech that creates a barrier between the audiences empathy and the characters on screen. JP (Adler) is an especially uncanny Lanthimos creation that somehow escaped. At the core of his character is a desire to create a real and emotional connection with his long lost friend, he words it exactly like that, by the way. There’s also a scene where JP says excitedly that he wants to show Francis something, jump cut to a scene where the pair are sat in silence watching hardcore lesbian pornography with the only thing cutting the awkwardness being the ecstatic moans of the women on TV. That scene doesn’t end there, JP goes on to ask whether it’s okay to touch his friend on the leg, moving higher and higher up his leg before forcefully grabbing a handful.

When talking about a film as stand-offish and austere as this, you need to be prepared for something that will likely alienate the unprepared; perhaps even the prepared too. Those who are open-minded enough to meet this obscure little weirdo on its own terms will find a wryly funny film about isolation and mental illness. It’s the sort of funny that’d send Joe Pesci into a socially hysterical meltdown, either way, there are scenes dotted throughout the bloodhound that you’ll not be in any hurry to forget; whether it’s the aforementioned porno screening or the two men having a playfight while fully zipped into sleeping bags.

Looping back around to the story – JP asked Francis to visit him, when he arrives the affluent young man reveals that he hasn’t left the house in two years (scared of the world around him) and that he and his ill sister are the only two members of his family that are still alive. Then, on the first night, there is a moment in which the sister, Vivian (Annalise Basso), slinks under the curtains of Francis’s room B.O.B. style begging him to leave as everyone who enters this house is destined to die in short order. Ignoring how different the isolation angle plays in a pandemic era, Picard is using the bloodhound as a vehicle to talk about the fragile mental health of isolation whether enforced or as a byproduct of such riches that there is no possible way to relate to real life. A horribly awkward scene with a pizza delivery man is this idea perfectly distilled.

Much of the Bloodhound is made up of awkward social interactions that fall somewhere in the void between funny and tragically sad, yet here it is being released on a home video label primarily associated with horror and cult classics. You can make a case for it being a horror movie but only in the most tangential of ways. Another director who is not technically of the horror clan but is constantly referred to as one is David Lynch, the Twin Peaks Creator is a key talking point when you bring up a smattering of scenes that punctuate the film. Every morning, JP talks of a nightmarish lucid dream, the main one is where the name of the film comes from. He introduces a human-like creation with a bag over its (pig)head that crawls its way through the sewers on its way someone’s house to hide in the cupboards, all those who live there with fear – a haunting scene has to have been influenced by the iconic “behind the diner” scene from Mulholland Drive. With numerous uncanny scenes such as this – Picard has crafted one of those few films where the moniker ‘Lynchian’ actually holds weight.

An alienating, obtuse film that falls somewhere between Lanthimos and Lynch – that alone will be enough for you to conclude whether or not this a film for you. If it is, the off-kilter style is beguiling enough to make the all too brief 80 minutes fly by. If it is not, Arrow Video’s latest will be like watching someone watch paint dry. It’s worth the risk, either way, I’d say. For those that do meet the film on its own terms and jive with it in some way, they will find an expertly directed chamber piece, gorgeously lensed, hauntingly scored and with a central performance from Joe Adler where if ever we were to meet, I’d be walking on eggshells, terrified of saying the wrong thing in the wrong way.

Thanks for reading Rob’s review of The Bloodhound

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