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Kicking Blood

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Movie Reviews (Toronto International Film Festival): Kicking Blood and Mlungu Wam (Good Madam)

Movie Reviews (Toronto International Film Festival): Kicking Blood and Mlungu Wam (Good Madam)

Director Blaine Thurier’s Kicking Blood is a stylish vampire film that, like The Addiction (1995) and other entries in the genre, deals with these undead creatures’ thirst for blood as a chemical dependency. Anna (Alana Bale) is one such bloodsucker, and when she invites alcoholic and suddenly homeless Robbie (Luke Bilyk) to her place and tells him “I’m going to suck your blood and get high . . .”, he invites her to do that but after one last request. He then pours a bottle of booze down the sink and proclaims that he will never drink again as long as he lives. Intrigued by his oath, Anna refrains from biting him, and as she goes on to admire his determination to stick to his promise when giving in to his cravings would be so easy, she begins to rethink her lifestyle. Her vampire partners with whom she hunts, Nina (Ella Jonas Farlinger) and Boris (Benjamin Sutherland), are none too

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Joseph Perry
Sep 13, 2021
Horror Fuel

Toronto International Film Festival 2021: Our Half-Dozen “Have to See!” Horror Films

Shocks and shudders abound during Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) hybrid event September 9–18, 2021, with in-person cinema screenings in Toronto and digital screenings available to viewers across Canada. Among the incredible international line-up of horror, science fiction, thriller, and other genre-cinema styles are the following six stand-outs, which Horror Fuel highly recommends. My comments follow in italics after descriptions adapted from TIFF’s official program and website. Kicking Blood “Blaine Thurier’s sultry, perma-stoned, ultra-modern spin on the vampire genre evokes cult-horror figures like George A. Romero and Stuart Gordon.” Fusing the grittiness of George Romero’s Martin with the sly theatricality of Stuart Gordon’s early films (Re-Animator, From Beyond), Blaine Thurier’s Kicking Blood reimagines vampire mythology by transplanting it to the bohemian world Thurier has satirized since he began making films. Instead of the usual desiccated, tormented aristocrats with impossibly innocent victims, Thurier’s undead are hipster scavengers and swingers, their victims luckless hangers-on and drunks. Vampire Anna (Alanna Bale) is disappointed

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Joseph Perry
Sep 9, 2021

More from Kicking Blood

Movie Reviews (Toronto International Film Festival): Kicking Blood and Mlungu Wam (Good Madam)

Movie Reviews (Toronto International Film Festival): Kicking Blood and Mlungu Wam (Good Madam)

Director Blaine Thurier’s Kicking Blood is a stylish vampire film that, like The Addiction (1995) and other entries in the genre, deals with these undead creatures’ thirst for blood as a chemical dependency. Anna (Alana Bale) is one such bloodsucker, and when she invites alcoholic and suddenly homeless Robbie (Luke Bilyk) to her place and tells him “I’m going to suck your blood and get high . . .”, he invites her to do that but after one last request. He then pours a bottle of booze down the sink and proclaims that he will never drink again as long as he lives. Intrigued by his oath, Anna refrains from biting him, and as she goes on to admire his determination to stick to his promise when giving in to his cravings would be so easy, she begins to rethink her lifestyle. Her vampire partners with whom she hunts, Nina (Ella Jonas Farlinger) and Boris (Benjamin Sutherland), are none too

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 13, 2021
Horror Fuel

Toronto International Film Festival 2021: Our Half-Dozen “Have to See!” Horror Films

Shocks and shudders abound during Toronto International Film Festival’s (TIFF) hybrid event September 9–18, 2021, with in-person cinema screenings in Toronto and digital screenings available to viewers across Canada. Among the incredible international line-up of horror, science fiction, thriller, and other genre-cinema styles are the following six stand-outs, which Horror Fuel highly recommends. My comments follow in italics after descriptions adapted from TIFF’s official program and website. Kicking Blood “Blaine Thurier’s sultry, perma-stoned, ultra-modern spin on the vampire genre evokes cult-horror figures like George A. Romero and Stuart Gordon.” Fusing the grittiness of George Romero’s Martin with the sly theatricality of Stuart Gordon’s early films (Re-Animator, From Beyond), Blaine Thurier’s Kicking Blood reimagines vampire mythology by transplanting it to the bohemian world Thurier has satirized since he began making films. Instead of the usual desiccated, tormented aristocrats with impossibly innocent victims, Thurier’s undead are hipster scavengers and swingers, their victims luckless hangers-on and drunks. Vampire Anna (Alanna Bale) is disappointed

Continue reading →
Joseph Perry
Sep 9, 2021