How sad is this?

Fresh and Exciting

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.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

What a good idea. What a poor production. Brilliant child and teen actors, 10/10. There were moments, but only from the actors under 22. The rest, meh. Best use of 12 step scenarios still goes to Fight Club.

I liked the story line. I liked the slow and steady pace. I really enjoy movies with those qualities. I also love that it's not a volume roller coaster. You know, louder than hell and then suddenly the actors are whispering and then loud again and back and forth. I hate riding the volume buttons on my remote as I'm watching a movie. What I didn't like is how dark it was. I love a dark themed movie but I can't stand when I can't see everything on the screen. I know that may not make sense to a lot of people but there's a difference between a dark movie and a poorly lit movie. But that's just me. My two cents.

Do you remember the subtlety of certain novels about the addiction to blood of the night creatures and its metaphors? Now, forget about it, because Family Blood will try to force down your throat the comparison between drugs and vampirism. Despite the title of my review, Family Blood is not a horror-comedy. In fact, this is a horror-drama, produced by Blumhouse and distributed by Netflix, that centres on Ellie (Vinessa Shaw), a recovering drug addict who has just moved to a new city with her two teenage children. Ellie joins a support group, where she meets shady guy Christopher (James Ransone, Sinister 2), who helps the woman get past her addiction by providing her with a new one, for blood! Family Blood has a few enjoyable aspects. To begin with, the movie really tries to be original and tackle vampirism in a fresh, unconventional way: we see Ellie going to the phases of transformation and how they affect her life and the life of her children. Yet, albeit riddled with jump-scares (some of them fake), this movie creates a genuine tension during the first hour. This is backed up and strengthened by the very well-crafted technical features: very reminiscing of Let The Right One In (the remake, not the original) in terms of atmosphere and camera-work, Family Blood builds up its story through a sombre and dark tone. In general, the production values are really good and little cookie-cutter (surprisingly so for a Blumhouse production). Despite the Uwe Boll-esque CGI blood utilised during the last 20 minutes of the film, which really looked fake and cheap, the violence in the movie is quite effective and it's helped by the fact that many actions are only implied rather than shown. Unfortunately, that's about it. For starter, the acting is atrocious: I honestly wouldn't know whether to blame the cast (Ransone and Shaw never convinced me as actors) or the directing, since it's entirely plausible the director told them "just act and speak you're under suppressants okay?" I mean, this kind of line delivery makes sense for Shaw, since her character is kind of supposed to look and sound like an annoying, boring woman. It's inexplicable for all the others though. Aside from the performances, Family Blood suffers enormously from pacing issues. By that I don't mean the pace isn't balanced, more so all the scenes (excluding the last 20 minutes) are equally boring: I know, what one finds boring might be extremely exciting for others - heck, some of my favourite movies are considered boring by most - but here the movie is overall uneventful, every sequence drags for too long. In all honestly, I dozed off a couple of times while I was watching this flick. The aspect that bothered me the most, however, is the over-the-top and spoon-feeding social commentary (or agenda?) the movie is trying to push. Vampirism is shown as a metaphor for drug addiction, which is an old but interesting concept. The problem is that this concept is executed in an obvious and annoying way, which makes it impossible (at least for me) to be affected or involved by the idea. Horror movies can be a very powerful tool to convey a strong and important social commentary and several great horror films were able to pull that off. In Family Blood that doesn't happen, because the filmmakers were most likely too focused on making sure the message didn't get lost for anybody. The result is a superficial social commentary that is neither original nor impactful. This is the third Blumhouse flick I watched and reviewed so far this year: Family Blood surely isn't as wrenched and laughable as Truth or Dare, but it's also far from being as good and interesting as Stephanie. Check it out if you're into vampire flicks, just don't expect anything other than a little creepy movie that would help you catch some sleep. Check out this, and my other reviews at https://horrorworld.reviews/ Family Blood 4.5/10

I rather liked this. If you have an IQ and can think of the irony. I was laughing my butt off. Because well if you blinked you'd miss the small humor and connections to " the lost boys". I was cracking that they were so worried about her abusing again but oh no. That would be so much easier situation. I was rolling on the floor when the son went outside to research what might be happening and looks to catch her licking the blood off the floor from his cut on his foot. How he tried to every vampire myth to no avail. I mean it was so utterly but I couldn't help but finding myself cracking up throughout. I thought the boy and girl were rater good and my man James. I knew he could play a creepy character. if th script were better this could have been rather good imo.