TIFF 2021: Kicking Blood
Blaine Thurier’s new vampire film Kicking Blood is an awkward, low-budget attempt to have fun with genre conventions and the clichés of vampire lore. Despite a certain independent energy, Kicking Blood doesn’t register with any discernable level of fun, wit, or perceptible stamp on vampire films.
A vampire librarian, Anna (Alanna Bale), decides to quit feeding off people when she meets a recently homeless recovering alcoholic, Robbie (Luke Bilyk). The idea is certainly enough of a platform for the story to jump off, but the script truly is listless. Every scene is governed by dialog. Thurier as a director has not developed a sense yet of how to show or communicate through the medium of film. Characters say everything and do hardly anything. Kicking Blood may have found some redemption within its dialog if it had, at least, been well written. Sadly, no. It has clunky discourse and awkward banter, as well.
A lot of micro-budget projects relish in creative problem-solving. Kicking Blood isn’t one of those films and finds itself victim of a number of bad decisions that place the production beneath a ‘community-theatre’ banner rather than an ‘indie-film’ one. The production design is shockingly awkward. Anna’s apartment is evidently a dressed up stage in a blackbox theatre or an empty warehouse. The geography of her home is impossible to discern. Only a bed or couch or tub is lit as required per the scene with only a little a bit of set dressing on the fringe of the lighting. Everything in the background is an unlit abyss. A scene at a bar is the same thing: an apparently dressed theatrical space. Other moments, which are set in public locations, are awkwardly populated with no extras. This provides and exceptionally cheap, amateur atmosphere to a scene that is zeroed in on characters who go clubbing to try to hook. It’s a sad, unnatural, empty-feeling scene.
The film’s greatest sin, though, is its lack of grit. For a film about vampires and one that has an interesting potential hook – that of comparing eternal life to the lows of alcoholism – Thurier fails to embrace elements of love, blood, lust, violence, vampirism imagery, horror, or even its own efforts at dark-comedy. None of it. Kicking Blood completely lacks iconography, and thus, any identity that may have transcended its student-level quality.
Film festivals are valuable entities for filmmakers. They can be start points for the lives of films, but they are networking and learning opportunities for storytellers. Honestly, Kicking Blood is not likely destined for a celebrated run in theatres or on streaming services. However, Thurier is clearly in love with his idea here. And that isn’t nothing. However, it doesn’t work at all, and his cast are really quite poor. But, Kicking Blood’s TIFF experience may hopefully serve more as a solid resume entry for Thurier. Not everyone gets an invite to a premiere festival – and Thurier has had multiple. From this, one hopes that it opens doors to work with more professionals who help get his storytelling off the dimly lit stage and into the realm of creative professional cinema.