GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020 - Blood Machines
GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL 2020
The long-awaited Kickstarter project Blood Machines is a visual banquet! Film geek trivia: it was billed as a sequel to a 2016 music video and subsequently picked up by horror streaming service Shudder. Delightful colour concoctions fill the screen for the vast majority of the runtime, emulsifying beautifully to create the fantastical atmosphere the film cultivates. In fact, it could be a metaphor for the film as a whole: beautiful, but messy.
The visual splendour is an undeniably confident vision from director Seth Ickerman, who conjures a fizzling, irrepressibly vibrant atmosphere. The screen is saturated with grain, rounded corners and black flecks appearing on screen, emanating the spotty imperfections visible in old productions shot on film. It tries so hard to replicate that feeling of watching an eighties film reel, it occasionally becomes distracting. By the end of the experience, however, seeing these effects had become second nature –whether seeing it on a large screen would make it too overbearing remains a cause for concern.
Additionally, Carpenter Burt’s powerful synth-wave soundtrack fits the visuals beautifully. It hits heavy, but not quite unpleasantly so, teetering the line of high-handedness just as closely as the visuals. The distinct style of the electronica doesn’t replicate the ethereal pulsing refrains from the soundtrack to Alex Garland’s Annihilation, nor does it sound experimentally new wave-like electronic pioneer Laurie Anderson’s work. The music is integral to the strongly audiovisual adventure, and could have caused the collapse of the entire film had it been poorly executed. Nevertheless, it finds its own rhythm and further elevates the film.
The film itself defies genre and is incredibly hard to define; distinctly, there are aspects of horror and sci-fi, but also of adventure and art films. The runtime makes it hard to pin down a descriptor for Blood Machines as well – the current version hovers at around fifty minutes, too long for a short film, but not long enough for a feature. Yet, it feels like neither, nor does it recollect a television pilot. Instead, the lingering impression is of an incredibly elongated music video, or the experience of a theme park simulator. In its refusal to fit inside any box – further aggravated by the thin plot which is largely abandoned for the final twenty minutes – it can sometimes impress upon the viewer as style over substance, leaving a semi-impactless aftertaste.
The film relies so extensively on its visuals and music that the screenplay feels more like a grab bag of ideas than a well-embodied story. The storyline advances the plot sufficiently enough, but regrettably, it is as shallow as a puddle. It doesn’t ruin the film by any means, but it significantly affects its post-viewing impact. The antithetical film to Blood Machines’ mantra of style over substance is Prospect, another low-budget science-fiction entry which has less in the way of extraterrestrial visuals, but a far meatier screenplay. That film alone proves that a screenplay can essentially carry a film; Blood Machines, unfortunately, cannot prove that beautiful effects and music alone can do the same. The Black Mirror episode USS Callister attempted to evoke a retro-infused space opera atmosphere too, and delivered markedly better on this objective.
Despite this, Blood Machines still mostly lives up to the characterisation of a neon-soaked epic; it is an unusual film which feels like testing ground for what could be moulded into an entertaining series. It's also a reassuringly confident and competent feature that can satisfy fans enough, even if it might not win over everyone.