Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Amazon Prime video is amazing. This isn't sales pitch. It's the truth. What finally sold me was the sheer amount of movies that I can search through. It's the closest thing I've found to the shelves of an old mom and pop video store. Ah, the old days of Prime Time Video, where I'd look at all the lurid horror boxes and try to decide how many I could watch in a weekend.Blood Beat is one of those box covers you'd look at over and over again, trying to decide whether or not you should rent it. Then, when you finally sit down and take it in, it blows your mind and you try to describe it to your friends and they think you have to be making it all up. Ah, the pre-internet days. Well, now that we're all online, I'd like to think of you as my friend. And I'm going to tell you all about this crazy movie.Fabrice A. Zaphiratos has two directing credits to his name and this is one of them. That's a shame - his direction here tends toward the strange and unexpected. There were moments here where I just yelled in glee at the TV, shocked at what was happening. It's not the best movie you've ever seen, but it aspires to be one.This feels like a regional horror movie made by a bunch of European art directors on too many drugs. It's also the only Christmas horror movie I've ever seen that has a psychic samurai slasher. But it really isn't even about Christmas. It's also the only film I've ever seen that has a murder scene synched up with a girl's orgasms. Also, the house the family lives in tries to kill everyone at one point, but no one decides to leave it.This all starts with Cathy and Gary talking about how they'll never get married, despite him wanting to be a father to her children. This scene feels like something out of a pure drama and not in a tacked onto a horror film way. I actually thought I had accidentally loaded up a student film or an attempt to film a 70's hard and honest look at relationships. But soon enough, Dolly and Ted come home. Ted's girlfriend Sarah is the cause of great concern, as Cathy's psychic abilities warn her of the young girl. Surely, she's seen her before. And when Sarah finds a samurai sword in her bedroom, things get strange.As weird as the film gets, it never plays anything for laughs. It's earnest and deadly serious. Unlike a modern film, it explains nothing. You're open to explain for yourself why the mother and girlfriend have a psychic link. Why is the killer a samurai? Why are there strange video effects throughout? Why is the mom a painter? I'd love to discuss this film at a party with a roomful of people who have just watched it.This movie is why I love movies. It feels like a discovery. I want to share it with you.

Sensitive young Sarah (an appealing portrayal by fetching brunette Claudia Peyton) and her boyfriend Ted (likeable James Fitzgibbons) decide to spend Christmas with Ted's loopy psychic artist mother Cathy (a seriously strange performance by Helen Benton) in rural Wisconsin. Things go dangerously awry when a lethal wacko in a samurai outfit (!) shows up and starts bumping people off.Wtiter/director Fabrice A. Zaphiratos makes nice use of the lovely forest locations, presents an interesting array of colorful oddball characters, and crafts a genuinely disorienting off-kilter spooky atmosphere. Moreover, the glacial pacing, increasingly bizarre narrative (the samurai's attacks are apparently triggered by Sarah's orgasms!), the wonky synthesizer score, lovably low-rent (not so) special effects, and, best of all, these jarring classic music compositions frequently blasting away on the soundtrack during the more intense moments all further enhance this film's considerable outre charm. Vladimir Van Maule's sharp cinematography boasts several freaky stylistic flourishes. A truly peculiar one-of-a-kind oddity.

I was quite surprised by this movie. Obviously it was made with no money at all, but acting, photography, editing and story are well done. Proves once more you can do an entertaining movie with very little. "Blood Beat" owes a bit to "Poltergeist", "Witchboard" and "The Shining" maybe, but has a good storyline of its own about the ghost of evil (dressed up as a samurai warrior, also incarnated in one young lady) against a family whose members seem to have a certain talent for (good) magic. The special FX to show the magic (red powerlines vs blue powerlines) look ridiculous by today's standards, but hey, this is just a cheap little horror movie to waste a Sunday afternoon with, okay? The movie has a couple of memorable scenes (e.g. the samurai slaying the older woman, while the possessed young lady is getting more and more "excited", I thought the rapid cutting was breathtaking). If you see a copy on a probably dusty shelf, give it a try, as the video tape will be cheap I bet.

I saw this movie in my teen years. And I would tell you how I felt about it if I had any idea what in the hell the plotline was. I saw the tagline on this website and I understood more about this movie than when I actually saw the movie. Still, I think that's what made it so memorable.