Blood Clots (2018)

So, I recently caught a chance to screen a fun horror flick called Blood Clots (2018). Now, it’s a collection of horror stories curated by Freedom Cinema and consists of shorts by New York distributor Hewes Pictures. What first caught my eye was that Blood Clots was an anthology. So, there was is its first wins in my book. Unfortunately, for me, Blood Clots goes with seven short standalone stories. I’m more of a fan of the anthologies where each story works together for a bigger story. Perfect example, Trick r’ Treat (2007), which is one of my favorites. However, the standalone play worked for Blood Clots and I really enjoyed watching it.

Blood Clots is a horror/comedy with a seventy-one-minute runtime. It’s rated NR (not rated) but has language, violence, and nudity. Hell Of A Day was written and directed by Evan Hughes, Never Tear Us Apart was directed by Sid Zanforlin and written by Chris Bavota and Sid Zanforlin. Blue moon was directed by Marty Pick and written by Airell Anthony Hayles. Time to Eat was written and directed by Luke Asa Guidici. Still was written and directed by Carl Timms. Hellyfish was directed by Patrick Longstreth and Robert McLean. The Call of Charlie was directed by Nick Spooner and written by Guy Benoit, John Simpson, and Nick Spooner.

The shorts or “Clots” as they’re called, cover zombies, werewolves and other creatures in a pretty cool or funny way. Hell of a Day is about a lone survivor during a zombie apocalypse. There’s not really a lot of dialogue, which really impressed me. The whole short rides on the main star Octavia to carry the audience through her situation of being trapped alone in a basement. It has some really good looking special effects and I thought Octavia did a really good job.

Never Tear Us Apart is about a guy going to meet some family that he’s never met before. Unfortunately, what he sees when he gets there, wasn’t what he was expecting. This one was ok, but there wasn’t much of a build up. Like as soon as it started, it was over and I didn’t have time to really get into it. I thought the effects looked good and they did a great job setting up the creepy cabin in the woods look.

Blue Moon covers one of my favorite monsters, but I was pretty disappointed by the time everything was said and done. The story and playthrough were good, I just didn’t care for the creature effects in this one. I did like that I couldn’t tell which way the story was going at first. In a who was in trouble and who was the killer kind of way, Hayles does a good job at misdirecting the audience and then finishing off the story with a bloodbath.

Time to Eat is a cool clot that surprised me in the end with a nice creature vs creature angle I didn’t see coming. This one has absolutely no dialogue. You just watch the mother and son as they do their thing and then boom, it’s over.

Still is my second favorite of the clots! The story was killer and Capella was a great choice for the lead. It’s about a living statue that got caught during a zombie attack. As everyone around him is either being killed or eaten, he’s still not moved a muscle. As all of the zombies do their thing, Capella is trying to figure out what to do. As I was watching this one, the dialogue and playthrough kind of reminded me of Zombieland (2009) a bit. There is dialogue, but it’s giving in the form of Capella talking to himself. Yeah, it’s another zombie flick, but coming at it the way they did added some newness to the genre.

Hellyfish was a really interesting one. It starts off a bit slow and then kicks into overdrive. I felt like I was watching a music video more than a horror short. A downside, I didn’t like the CGI, but it actually fit the short really well. Hellyfish ends up being just a fun watch. It’s people vs mutant jellyfish. So, it’s all cheesy acting and funny kills. Now, the music was really good. Just in case you were wondering, the songs are Puke & Rally (Hot Problems), Nailgun (Boom Chick), Old Monster (Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun) and Autonomic (Today the Moon, Tomorrow the Sun). Something else that was cool about Hellyfish was they continue the story with animation during the end credits. So, stick around and check em’ out.

A Call of Charlie was my favorite of them all. It’s about a creature that looks like Cthulhu coming over to a married couples house for a blind date. If that wasn’t odd enough, the couple has some uninvited guests show up that join the dinner party. I think what made this one so great was that it played out like a real blind date. Charlie and his date are trying to figure out if they click and the uninvited guests are completely twisted by what they see. Some monstrous creature is at the table breaking bread with them and everyone is acting like this is completely normal. I have to give a quick shout out to the creature effects that The Basement FX did because it looked so killer!

Some of the cast is (Hell Of A Day) Alexandra Octavia, (Never Tear Us Apart) Matt Keyes, Alex Weiner, James Rae, Leigh Ann Taylor and Mark Krupa, (Blue Moon) Louis Selwyn, Madalina Bellariu Ion and Samantha Parry, (Time to Eat) Ethan Mora and Ydaiber Orozco, (Still) Joe Capella and Rob Hall, (Hellyfish) Agnes Asplund and Mohanned Sinbawy and (The Call of Charlie) Brooke Smith, Harry Sinclair, Roberta Valderrama, Evan Arnold, Kristin Slaysman, Bradley Bundlie and Sven Holmberg.

What level of gore should you expect? High, there’s a ton of gore in this one! You’ll get everything from blood spatter to some disembowelment. I thought there was some pretty cool kill scene scattered throughout the movie, but Hellyfish has some of the funniest.

If Blood Clots sounds like something you wanna check out then you’re in luck. Blood Clots premiered on Vimeo and Amazon on August 3rd, 2018. So, go check it out and let me know what you thought about it.

Summary : Overall, I really dug on this one and actually want to grab the DVD whenever it comes out. 

It's rated NR (not rated) but has language, violence, and nudity


Rating


Average

4