Eye Candy #211 - "Clive Barker's Book of Blood"

Clive Barker’s Book of Blood:  Based on several short stories by Clive Barker, “Books of Blood” has the requisite amount of gore, sex, and just general weirdness that make it a Barker movie.  The overall story of the film is framed by a sequence involving a young man covered in bleeding wounds.  He relates how he received his wounds to a kidnapper, which leads to the main story of the film - a young paranormal researcher (Sophie Ward), her assistant, and a young man with clairvoyant abilities (Jonas Armstrong), move into a purportedly haunted house to record phenomena to determine whether or not it is indeed true.  Soon after their arrival, all manner of strange noises are heard in the house, eventually escalating into attacks on the young man leading to bloody wounds.  Each of the group is drawn in, seeing things including apparitions, ghostly writings, and little dead kids playing in the yard (following Woodchuck’s First Rule of Film - nothing is scarier than dead kids), getting worse and worse until we learn what the “Books of Blood“ are, who writes them, and who reads them.  Adhering to the typical Barker syllogism that “happy endings are sissies”, it doesn’t turn out well in the end for any involved.  I feel very much like this was a half-successful effort and I really wanted to like it.  Barker’s material isn’t the easiest to film (yet people keep trying), but it is ambitious and a nice counterpoint to most American horror which is fairly bland.  The performances are fine, the special effects have high and low points, but the film is just aloof so you really don’t have the opportunity to care.  Still, Barker fans should be pleased.  Certainly made me want to go back and read these short stories.  Woodchuck sez, “For fans.”