BLOOD TRAILS

Anne and her boyfriend Michael are going through a romantic crisis, and the girl, unbeknownst to Michael, spends a night of passion with a stranger, a passionate policeman. With the intention of restoring their relationship, which is about to collapse, Anne and Michael decide to spend a weekend in a cabin in the woods, dedicating themselves to long mountain bike excursions. But the policeman-lover is cultivating an obsession with Anne and follows the couple to the mountains, intent on making the girl his forever. With "Blood Trails" we are in the most tried-and-true territory of survival horror, in the most typical rural thriller situation with an abundance of gratuitous violence, in short, in the most shameless déjà-vu. The geographical origin of this film (Germany, to be precise) then attaches it to the current trend that has especially brought to the fore Great Britain ("Wilderness", "Broken") and France ("High Tension", "Frontier(s)") in the contemporary horror landscape thanks to a now well-recognizable mixture of rural environments and extreme survival situations. "Blood Trails" thus fits into this sub-genre, without adding much, but drawing from a cinematic tradition that has roots far away, especially in the lavish years of the '70s. And it is precisely to the cinema (especially American) of the '70s that "Blood Trails" seems to refer with more insistence, thanks to the narration of a minimalist story and a specific aesthetic rendering. The plot is simple, predictable if you will, the typical survival situation in rural landscapes like we have seen in "The Hills Have Eyes" or "A Quiet Weekend of Fear", in which the human being is forced to regress and bring out his most instinctive and animalistic side in order to face the "enemy" on equal terms, a nemesis that in this case does not belong to the alien and hostile environment in which the protagonist finds himself acting, but he too is a stranger in a strange land that in some ways brings him closer to his victim. The villain of "Blood Trails" is a sort of deranged cell of a social organism, an animal kept in captivity, capable of moving in urban and rural environments with equal extreme naturalness. The premise that lies at the heart of the characterization of the possessive and animalistic policeman is therefore perhaps the only element of true novelty in this film, although in the end it is also its weakest point. If on paper the psychopath played by Ben Price could have worked well, on screen he appears more than anything like a Michael Myers in sportswear, omnipresent and a bit out of context, to whom perhaps even the more classic and seasoned horny hick would have been preferable. On the opposite side we find a very stereotypical victim, an insecure woman, convincingly played by Rebecca Palmer, who manages to show her personality only when the instinct for survival dictates the rules. A lamb that, when the situation requires it, manages to bring out the wolf's fangs, appearing not too far from her executioner. Therefore, it may seem paradoxical, but "Blood Trails" works well precisely in its lack of originality and, when it tries to bring innovations, it is not very convincing. Very good is the directorial performance of Robert Krause (also screenwriter), who manages to give personality to the film thanks to a sought-after use of framing and zooms that, combined with the often hectic editing of Wolfgang Bohm and Richard Krause, give the film a sense of hysteria and hallucination. Notable is also the photography of Ralf Noak who, thanks to muted and twilight tones, manages to build a dark and oppressive atmosphere despite the fact that the film is almost entirely set in daylight. Excellent are the natural settings that serve as scenery for the film. In short, "Blood Trails", although it tells nothing new, appears as a solid and well-made survival horror, even more appreciated if one considers that it is an independent work made with a very modest budget.