Blood Beat

A stoned French director tries to make an artsy Japanese horror movie in Wisconsin. What, I ask, could go wrong?

There's this thing that happens where a woman conjures up a samurai spirit that offs people while she's getting off and it is a gloriously extended sequence that takes a while to fully grasp and then goes on for another six minutes all to the awe of an audience that couldn't have asked for this. Not this.

A young couple visits home in small town Wisconsin for Christmas, only to have the girlfriend possessed by the spirit of a homicidal samurai. The boyfriend discovers his family has psychic powers for the first time ever. The end includes a staring contest where their hands glow as they concentrate each other to death. All of this is much less interesting than it sounds.

Pretty high on camp value, but not as high as The Director was when he made this. Epic effects.

Well there’s must've been some magic in that old samurai set they found For when she placed it on her bed it killed everyone in town The opening is brutal and boring, the rest of the run time drops the boring part. I have absolutely no idea what this was about other than Wisconsin dropping a nuclear bomb on samurai in wwii a perfect example of sticking it out through the trash cause baby end of this shit pile is some treasures. Wherever you thought this thing was going, you’re wrong.

"What do filmgoers want?" Griffith asked, "A girl and some samurai armor."

While still not the worst thing I've ever sat through, this is the kind of movie that makes 80% of low-budget trash look quality by comparison. There's no protagonist, there was probably no actual script given how godawful the writing is, & absolutely nothing makes sense. The audio is terrible, the "stylistic" directing choices are terrible, the acting is terrible, the story is terrible, the ending is terrible. I try not to throw movies under the bus too often, but this just plain sucks.

Wisconsin is fucked up

Low-budget, but also low-talent. Jagged escalation and pacing. Nothing remotely interesting happens for about the first thirty minutes. After that, it's still a shit show whose cardinal sin—amidst a few moments of entertainment—is being boring as hell. Slapshot shot sequencing and editing—flipping back and forth from face to face and shot to shot in some attempt to establish mood. Don't even ask me what this is even supposed to be about.

Some people really enjoy this movie but I wasn't one of them. To me, this was just a bore.

This is a strange one, and it took me a couple attempts to get through it as I was watching it late at night. It didn't really make more sense the next day as the film follows a kind of dream logic. It's not exactly a good film - nor is it a stinker; but it sure is an unique combination of regional horror mixed with Samurai ghost and set during Christmas.