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Studio: Lion’s Gate
MSRP: $19.99
Rated: R
Running Time: 87 minutes
Special Features:
- Trailers
The Pitch
Quicksilver meets Friday The 13th meets Murdercycle.
The Humans
Rebecca Palmer, Ben Price, Tom Frederic.
The Nutshell
“Scream all you want…”
The Lowdown
Anne (Rebecca Palmer) is a hottie bike messenger who has a rough one-nighter with Chris, a guy who claims to be a cop; feeling guilty about the whole thing, Anne decides to take a trip to the mountains with her white-bread boyfriend Michael in an attempt to smooth things over.
"The walls are melting again!"
Idyllic tranquility, gratuitous biking scenes, and soft-focus sex quickly turns to terror, though: Chris has followed the twosome to their isolated retreat, and he offs Michael in a brutal – but comically ludicrous – bit. Now totally isolated, Anne attempts to elude and outwit her murderous stalker.
What follows for the balance of Blood Trails‘ 87-minute running time is Anne fleeing through the forest along narrow bike trails and rough logging roads, being pursued by a confident killer who always seems to be one step behind her. Whether on foot or on bike, Anne screams a lot, and when she isn’t screaming, she’s falling down and knocking herself out. She then comes to, and promptly does something really stupid to endanger herself or those around her.
Green-tinted ’60s bicycle chase.
Every once in a while, Anne comes across someone who tries to help her, be it a passing motorist or a couple of loggers. Chris generally appears at this point, and kills the expendable extras. These moments – and the expected gore shots – cause Anne to scream and run/bike/drive away again. She also knocks herself unconscious once or twice more too, for good measure.
As you can tell, Blood Trails is a somewhat repetitive movie, using the same basic setups over and over again, and padding out the running time with green-tinged flashbacks and numerous bike-riding sequences that serve more as product placement than anything else; the logos of prominent mountain bike and riding equipment manufacturers are featured prominently in the closing credits, so draw your own conclusions. Blood Trails feels like a short film stretched out to feature length.
The Passion Of The Bikes.
That doesn’t mean that Blood Trails is a waste of time though; it’s still a watchable movie. There are some scenes that manage to wring out a bit of suspense, and while there’s not a lot of violence on display, Blood Trails does have a few good violent, bloody bits that stick with you. The movie also has some nice cinematography and editing, belying its undoubtedly low production cost.
Anne’s boobs also escape their bonds a couple of times, which is a must in a movie like this.
The best scenes in Blood Trails come at the end, during the inevitable showdown between Anne and Chris. The finale is effectively tense, and is more low-key than you might expect from small-budget horror fare. Still, it gives the blood-seeking fans exactly what they want without being totally gratuitous.
Michael died for your sweet tooth.
The acting in Blood Trails is a bit better than usual for this sort of cheapie: Palmer’s Anne is fairly appealing (she screams quite well too), and as Chris, Ben Price is required to do little more than look confident and cocky as he strides around; he does a good job. The character’s aren’t developed very well though, being a bit too enigmatic and mysterious for their own good. A bit more fleshing out at the script level would have helped here.
Blood Trails is a fairly watchable “hot chick in peril” horror flick, albeit one you’ve seen many times before in different guises. If you don’t expect too much from it, you’ll probably enjoy Blood Trails on a base level.
Anne becomes one with her surroundings, rendering herself practically invisible.
The Package
Blood Trails doesn’t have much in the way of special features: just a trailer or two for upcoming Lion’s Gate movies, and your choice of English or Spanish subtitles.
Technically, Blood Trails is respectable, with good picture and sound quality. Nothing amazing, but you can see and hear everything clearly. Audio comes in two varieties: 5.1 Dolby Digital and 2.0 Dolby Stereo.
The Evanescence video you weren’t allowed to see.
The box art for the DVD package is well-done, and features a few accolades from film festivals and movie websites you’ve probably never heard of.
6 out of 10