NIGHTSTREAM 2020: Bleed With Me
NIGHTSTREAMThe concept of a cabin in the woods has screamed horror for the last several decades. The idea of a home away from home should be a comforting one, but the isolation of this small, ramshackle property out in the middle of the woods is rarely anything but. In the world of film production, setting a feature in a cabin like this is useful for a low budget feature in order to keep things contained and relatively cheap by sticking to one location. Bleed with Me is indeed a low budget indie movie with practically the entirety of its runtime set out in the woods. But rather than embracing the full on horror/gore aspects of films like The Evil Dead, director, Amelia Moses instead chooses to focus on the idea of isolation which certainly dials up the tension, resulting in something undeniably creepy.
Newcomer, Lee Marshall plays Rowan, a young woman invited to spend a few days at a cabin that belongs to her co-worker, Emily (Lauren Beatty) and her boyfriend, Brendan (Arios Tyros). Rowan is a fairly shy person but, at the start, seems comfortable third wheeling with the duo. Stories of how Rowan and Emily met come out during drunken conversations and, occasionally, somebody lets slip something a bit more personal. It’s all harmless fun.
But, during the nights, Rowan is convinced someone is coming into her room and stealing her blood. Waking up with gouges or cuts on her body, it’s hard to shrug off these injuries to Emily and an increasingly concerned Brendan.
Marshall proves herself a worthy talent and one to keep an eye on. She elevates the piece and portrays a character that certainly keeps the audience on her side. Effectively acting as the character portal into the film, she is both likeable and untrustworthy, and it’s only as the plot pieces start falling into place that Rowan’s real persona begins to come across. Both Moses and Marshall capture a real sense of claustrophobia and madness through Rowan and it’s refreshing to see a psychological storyline that genuinely keeps its endgame wrapped tightly around itself. With regards to Beatty and Tyros as the other two pieces of the acting triptych, neither are particularly bad and both play their parts well. They simply aren’t as interesting as Rowan and serve as pawns in her story, rather than having their own arcs to live.
Moses’ greatest promise as a director comes from dragging overused horror film iconography out of the dust and giving it a little shake up. She has crafted a memorable film here, with just enough to keep you thinking after the credits have rolled.