Review: BLOODED - Good Concept Made Into Drab Affair
rating: 1
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A remote island, the hunters becoming the hunted, suffering psychical and mental torture at the hands of a masked enemy sounds like a Hollywood script right? If even half the events that take place in Blooded, the directorial feature of Edward Boase are true it is certainly an extraordinary story. Unfortunate then that the film is a rather drab affair, never finding it's feet as either documentary or drama. In 2005 five friends went deer stalking on the beautiful but remote Isle of Mull. One of those individuals was Lucas Bell, the face of the pro-Fox Hunting campaign in Britain, along with his best friend and hunting buddy Ben, ex-girlfriend Liv, his estranged brother Charlie and his girlfriend Eve. When the five awake, alone and naked in the freezing cold wilderness their hunting holiday quickly turned into a deadly game of cat and mouse between them and an extreme animal rights group called the Real Animal League. The footage taken by the RAL on handheld cameras would appear all over the internet with the title: If you HUNT you're FAIR GAME. Blooded tells the other side of the story featuring talking heads interviews with the victims combined with dramatic reconstruction of the extraordinary events. While watching Blooded I felt there was something too slick about the victims interviews, they just seemed too at ease in front of the camera. Sure enough it only took a trip to the IMDB to find out there are in fact two actors playing each character one in the dramatic reconstructions, one on interview yet there is no mention of this in the film. Even a fake TV interview with Lucas Bell (Neil McDermott) is made to seem completely real. Although I am sure the script is taken from real interviews it does not bode well when documentary film makers withhold such key information from it's audience. And as a result it's difficult to invest in the film as a true story when there is filter between us and the real life victims.