British writer/director Adam Mason’s previous films, Broken and The Devil’s Chair, have been described as many things, but subtle is not one of them. With Blood River, Mason and regular writing partner Simon Boyes have done a complete one-eighty (well, maybe one-forty) from the brutality and gore of their prior efforts and have delivered a psychological thriller with religious undertones.
Clark (Ian Duncan, Creep) and Summer (Tess Panzer, in her first starring role) are a young couple on a road trip through the Nevada desert on their way to tell her parents that Summer is pregnant. When one of their tires has a blowout and the only soul around is a hitchhiker (Andrew Howard, The Devil’s Chair) they had rather rudely brushed off earlier, the table is set for an intense tale of sin and retribution that leaves the audience wondering who the true hero of the movie is.
The cast has a good chemistry together (in fact, the three principals and the one secondary player – Sarah Essex – all figure in Mason’s next project, Luster), and Howard turns in a powerhouse performance, spouting biblical verse while slowly tapping away at the trust and security of the relationship between husband and wife. Shot in HD, the setting itself can be seen as a fourth main character; the heat, the dryness, the desolation of a ghost town in the middle of the desert all add to the slow buildup to a climax that offers, at the very least, an interesting take on the idea of sin and retribution.
Mason’s films have always polarized viewers – you either love them or hate them – but Blood River is a more complex film. A slow burn of a psychological thriller, it heightens the tension as we move along, all the while trying to get the audience to question our own morals. It’s just not a “loved it” or “hated it” movie; it falls somewhere in between. Give it enough time to settle in after watching it, though, and you’ll definitely appreciate its ideas and social commentary about the damage that keeping secrets can do.
