Brilliant and touching

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

In Blood Trails, Anne works as a courier on a bike. One night she hooks up with a cop but he turns out far more violent and ends up basically raping her. She doesn't tell anyone. Her loving boyfriend plans a mountain-biking trip for her. Anne has visions and feels her rapist is everywhere. When they run into a fellow cyclist she thinks it's him. The cyclist turns around and kills the boyfriend with his bike! Sure enough, it's the rapist. Anne escapes only to run into him repeatedly but he just stands there. Eventually he grabs her and takes her to his place where he has something sinister planned for her.Blood Trail is a pretty basic horror revenge movie but taking place in the woods and with the whole biking theme. The villain is your typical villain in god-mode. Despite the vastness of the forest, he always knows where Anne will end up. He's always a step ahead of her even she's racing on a bike and he's leisurely walking. When he reveals his plans to her I was hoping for some brilliant moment like in Martyrs, but it didn't happen. It's somewhat interesting but not what it could have been. The movie is very well directed but the director/writer isn't as good a writer as he is a director. In Hollywood fashion, this German production is nearly entirely devoid of dialog. The sounds/music are also excellent. Missing is more story.

The last years we have seen a lot of horrors that happens in the wild. High Lane was one of them for example. Here we have another one. It hasn't received very good reviews and even I still don't know what to think about it. The acting by all actors was convincing, I never have seen another flick they were in but again, they did well for me. The only negativity I could give is that it is sometimes a bit slow. Again, the storyline is very simple, Anna, while doing her job as a bike messenger gets in contact with a unknown biker. She was supposed to have sex with him but instead he played some kind of bondage with her. Due that bad experience she decides to go for a hike with her best friend. But not knowing that the unknown biker is watching her. From there on it's cat and mouse with some decent gore added with it. Robert Krause, the German director surely comes from goreland so he knows what he has to deliver. There are indeed some rare twist of situations, for example, the workers in the wood make strange reactions towards the girl without knowing her story. But now and then it's a bit of the same. Running away, being caught, running away again, being caught again. The final scene is again in the gory department so again that's okay. I guess everybody could watch it but some will indeed turn their face away with the first and last killing. Not that bad but lacking in delivering fear.

Blood Trails starts as the relationship between lovers Anne (Rebecca Palmer) & Michael (Tom Frederic) is on the rocks, in one last effort to salvage the relationship they decide to head out to Whistler Mountain Range where they have a cabin & can go mountain biking. One of the reasons why Anne & Michael's relationship is on brink is because Anne had a one night stand with a guy named Chris (Ben Price) who claimed to be a cop but is in fact a brutal & sadistic serial killer who has followed Anne & Michael out to the isolated mountain range with the intention of killing them both, can they survive as they use their mountain biking skills to try & find help as Chrissets about his work...This German production was co-written & directed by Robert Krause & one has to say that Blood Trails is a rather dull, clichéd & frustrating horror slasher come thriller that has a few positives which are lost amongst the negatives. The script is largely to blame for the films major failings, Anne as a character is really awful & she's one of those dumb horror film heroines who do the most bizarre, unnatural & stupid things. When faced with a brutal killer who has killed two people in front of her Anne decides to ignore the 4x4 Jeep & casually ride her bike away back into the woods instead of getting in the Jeep, running the killer over & heading for safety where she can find proper help. Anne blindly rides along & ends up riding off a cliff & into a river, why? Then she hits a large tree in the middle of her way which knocks her out, again why? Couldn't she like just stop & climb over the tree? Then there's the scene in which she phones for help & the operator tells her to stay where she is so they can track her mobile phone so what does she do? That's right she leaves. Brilliant. Then there's the notion that in broad daylight Anne can sit against a large wooden cross & not notice that her dead boyfriend is nailed to it for about five minutes. Right. The list goes on. Then there's Chris the killer who can just magically appear anywhere he wants & can instantly find Anne wherever she is in the mountain range. What were those two cops at the end doing there? How did Chris kill them? They had their guns pointed at him for God's sake. Why didn't either of those two forest workers not say anything? Surely if you see a scared, bloodied & upset woman you would at least ask her if she was OK, right? They don't even talk to each other & it's just a totally bizarre sequence that makes zero sense. The film takes itself extremely seriously but there's not much to it, the mountain biking aspect doesn't amount to anything & the character's are really empty & soulless, there's barely any dialogue & at nearly 90 odd minutes the film drags badly at times with seemingly endless shots of Anne walking, running or riding through the woods which become pretty tedious pretty quickly.There's not that much actual gore here, there's some blood splatter a ridiculous scene involving a slashed throat & a mutilated body is briefly seen. I actually thought the majority of Blood Trails looked terrific, there's some cool camera angles & some strong colour schemes & lighting that showcase some of the isolated wilderness to great effect & the 2:35:1 widescreen image is used to good effect & the film has an expansive feel but it's off-set by the annoying hand-held shaky camcorder moments & quick editing which gets annoying. It's debatable whether Blood Trails is a horror film or a thriller, it doesn't seem to know what it wants to be & ends up short changing us in both departments.Shot in Austria & Germany the production values are really nice & the film has some style about it but the script is poor, the pace is slow & the kills, character's & narrative are weak. There's only about five people in the entire film, a couple seem dubbed (badly too) while leading lady Rebecca Palmer puts in a decent performance with questionable material.Blood Trails is a mix of standard horror slasher & thriller which doesn't really satisfy on either account, in fact despite some nice visuals Blood Trails is pretty forgettable.

Don't you just hate it when people in jeopardy behave like morons just to prolong suspense? Take 'Blood Trails', for instance. This film has some of the most stupid behaviour of any potential murder victim I've seen in my life, but first lets concentrate on that title. You'd never guess, but the majority of the action takes places on a biking trail near a mountain, and lots of people get killed on it. Blood. Trails. It has a double meaning. DO. YOU. SEE?? Alas, this is the same level of intelligence the director and writer display throughout, as people make unfathomable decisions and end up inevitably as lifeless corpses. You have allow for a certain amount of leeway in slashers but come on, check out this bunch of howlers:1. If you get the opportunity to escape in a car, take it. Don't try to reverse and run over the psycho, and certainly don't assume that just because you can't see him any longer, he's dead. Or you might just end up with an axe in your fuel tank.2. If confronted with said psycho, do not throw only weapon you have at him because if you miss, you'll be defenceless and prone to attack.3. If the psycho turns his back to you and you happen to find a sharp knife to ambush him with, its usually a good idea not to make a lot of noise as you approach him, for he may just hear you and smack you in the gob, putting you on the floor and halting your worthy effort.4. If you somehow find yourself in possession of a cellphone in the wilderness and you reach a high enough peak in the wilderness to get reception to call 911, you should listen to the advice of the operator to STAY WHERE YOU ARE so they can find you with a helicopter within a few minutes. DO NOT run a mile from your present location just because you see a horrible sight. No, not Sharon Osborne, but your dead boyfriend crucified on a cross with his blood dribbling on you.5. If a strange girl covered in blood enters your vehicle and asks for help rescuing her boyfriend (who has any sane person could work out is brown bread by now) either contact the authorities or drop her off at the hospital. The guy in this film looks like he's going to be sensible and do the latter, but without much convincing from our lass in peril he backtracks, then takes his gun and advances on said psycho asking him for his credentials. I think you can guess what happens next..6. ..Which brings me neatly to 6, where I must tell you that no fewer than three people in this movie have their guns trained on the psycho at any one time, but somehow he is able to disarm and kill them all with just a lil wee knife. Is he some kind of army Marine? Nope, just a deranged cop who is the victim of a stupid screenplay.7. You're a lumberjack and you're OK. You sleep all night and you work all day. You also never warn people when you're felling trees, you throw around people's bikes when you're in a bad mood, and if your mate gets slaughtered by a psycho you rush over there unarmed like a lemming over a cliff to impale yourself on a sharp object. At least according to this script you do. If you have a union, I think you should sue. Get all copies of this removed from the shelves for misrepresentation. I don't have an ulterior motive, honest..8. Finally, after psycho abducts you, dresses your wounds, feeds you dinner, ties you up, cuts your legs open (you know, the usual) you're maybe wanna going to take some revenge. But this being a E-list horror film, being impaled through the head isn't going to be enough for him, is it? No, only when you've got a shard of glass and stabbed him through the throat with it, then you can relax. And the film ends LITERALLY THAT SECOND. Yay.So, in essence this is a badly directed (Check out all the pointless sped up and black and white scenes) badly acted ( Ben Price's performance as the monosyllabic psycho is laughably unconvincing) badly written (see above) and well, just all round bad really. I wouldn't be surprised if the catering on set was bad, too. Any cast members wanna PM me with complaints about their grub to confirm my suspicions? I hear lots of copies of Robbie Williams's flop Rudebox CD album were buried in a desert landfill somewhere because they wouldn't sell. How's about we fly out every DVD of Blood Trails too and dispose of them the same way? They can keep each other company! Come on now, What d'ya say?????? 1/10