Movies
Book of Blood (Books of Blood) (V)
“This is the story that is supposed to get you excited to see films like DREAD, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, CANDYMAN and numerous of other forthcoming Clive Barker adaptations, instead it makes you want to cut yourself as a reminder to never sit through it again.”
Editor’s Note: Review of uncut version, can you imagine how bad the Sci-Fi Channel version will be?
Just how important is BOOK OF BLOOD? While it’s not a sequel, or a prequel for that matter, the Clive Barker short story is the tale of where all of Barker’s shorts originated from (and where it ends). So, without a shadow of a doubt, this feature film adaptation should have been treated with such loving care that a mother with a new child would be jealous. BOOK OF BLOOD is the equivalent to Jason Voorhees getting his mask or Leatherface wielding a chainsaw, and yet, John Harrison found a way to completely crap all over it.
While studying a college student, Simon McNeal (Jonas Armstrong), who appears to be channeling messages from the dead, paranormal researcher Mary Florescu’s (Sophie Ward) discovers a house that is at the intersection of so-called “highways” transporting souls in the afterlife (as repeated several times during the duration of the film). While the pic begins on the right foot (taking cues from ENTITY by having a girl raped and skinned by an unseen spirit), it quickly falls into the “one of the worst movies in recent memory” category by the 60-minute marker.
Based on Clive Barker’s short stories “The Book of Blood” and “On Jerusalem Street”, John Harrison and Darin Silverman turn in a screenplay that’s embarrassingly bad. Claiming that it’s true to the story is no escape when you have the task of making a film “enjoyable” and even logical for that matter. BOOK OF BLOOD ignores solid story structure and instead dives into “it was all a dream” territory. The first hour, while loaded with exposition, still carries some solid moments ranging from ghostly sighting to our paranormal researcher waking up to witness a blood fountain covering ghost kids hanging out in the water. While you might watch the film and say, “hey, that was cool,” at the 60-minute mark it’s revealed that Simon has been creating all of these ghostly encounters. Not only has he tricked our paranormal investigators, but also he tricks the viewers. It’s insulting to the viewer as Harrison basically exclaims, “it was all fake, got you!” There’s nothing more infuriating that sticking with a movie just to have it pull a rug out from under you and tell you nothing really happened.
At this point BOOK OF BLOOD takes a nosedive, in record fashion. Mary discovers that Simon has been playing her for a fool, immediately following her own hallucination involving ghosts and a bloody fountain. Somehow Simon “faked” that whole scenario, along with other ridiculous feats like climbing on the ceiling to write creepy cryptic words. What’s even more baffling is why the ghosts of this haunted location decide to wait until just after his big reveal to start doing some hardcore “real” haunting.
By the time anything actually happens, the audience will be so far removed from the film that there’s no bringing them back. Instead of sticking to the task at hand, the shoddy script is so appalling that it attempts to be clever by giving the viewer a completely unnecessary and predictable prologue and epilogue (courtesy of Clive Barker’s “On Jerusalem Street”, the rare postscript included in UK editions of the sixth volume) where a man is hired to “collect” his skin of stories for the paranormal researcher/author. While this may give nice closure to the six volumes of short stories, it doesn’t work for the film and only drags out the (unbearably long) finale.
Sure BOOK OF BLOOD carries some astounding digital effects (an invisible hands pressing down on a girl’s mouth, an unseen hand on another’s back, cuts appearing out of nowhere, not to mention the astounding face-skinning sequence), but this isn’t a slasher film redeemable by how cool the kills are. This is the story that is supposed to get you excited to see films like DREAD, THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN, CANDYMAN and numerous of other forthcoming Clive Barker adaptations, instead it makes you want to cut yourself as a reminder to never sit through it again.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus took the literary world by storm back in 2023 with the release of his hit novel Whalefall. A terrifying yet intimate survival thriller with mythological undertones, the book was almost immediately bombarded with offers from movie studios wanting to adapt its claustrophobic imagery to the big screen.
Fast forward to June of 2026, and we finally got our first glimpse at Brian Duffield’s long-awaited adaptation of Whalefall, starring Austin Abrams as our unfortunate lead who gets swallowed alive by a sperm whale. While this two-and-a-half-minute teaser only covers the beginning of the story, it’s already been making waves online (and in-person at select 4DX promotional screenings) as one of the most stressful cinematic experiences of the year.
In fact, my own wife had to cover her eyes and exclaim, “You’re definitely not dragging me to watch this one” when we saw the whale’s jaws begin to close in on Abrams, with this incident alone already leaving me convinced that this will likely be one of the biggest genre hits of the year. With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to take a closer look at the teaser in order to break down interesting details and get a better idea of what’s in store for genre fans when the movie finally comes out this October.
Of course, as usual, don’t forget to comment below if you noticed something we didn’t!
Now, without further ado, here are five things we learned from the Whalefall trailer!
5. Austin Abrams Performed Many of His Own Stunts
Much like in his previous film, No One Will Save You, Duffield insisted that this visceral experience should be grounded by our main character’s believable reactions, regardless of the plot’s effects-heavy setup. That’s why the camera always makes sure to linger on Abrams through his diving mask, so we know that it’s really him going through this ordeal alongside the audience.
While plenty of CGI was used in order to bring this larger-than-life story to the big screen without killing our leading man, Abrams apparently insisted on performing many of his underwater stunts himself (several of which are visible in the trailer) – much to the chagrin of a worried Duffield and the flick’s stunt coordinator, Shauna Duggins.
4. The Film Seamlessly Transitions Between the California Coast and Underwater Sets
Duffield obviously wasn’t about to drag his crew out to the middle of the ocean and shoot inside a real sperm whale, but it’s reassuring to see the filmmaker blend on-location footage with the underwater tank segments and the literal belly of the whale set.
There may be plenty of CGI stitching these elements together, but the trailer shows us that only the truly impossible shots are completely digital, meaning that the filmmakers didn’t take the easy way out when it came to adapting this unique story.
3. The Whale is Only Part of the Story
Book adaptations tend to leave out inner monologues and the occasional flashback in order to streamline the narrative (which is one reason why it’s so difficult to translate Stephen King novels to the big screen), but a claustrophobic parable like Kraus’ Whalefall would get a bit dull after a while if the whole thing was entirely set within the creature’s stomach.
That’s why it’s such a relief that the trailer hints at how Duffield will also be adapting many of the book’s introspective moments chronicling our protagonist’s harsh upbringing under his troubled father. Not only do these inclusions give the audience some much-appreciated breathing room, but they also give Josh Brolin a chance to shine as a truly complicated character.
2. The Movie is Keeping the Book’s Scientific Accuracy…
While Kraus’ novel was inspired by a viral video of kayakers nearly being swallowed by a humpback whale, the writer ended up consulting with marine biologists about exactly what kind of situation might lead to a whale actually eating a human being alive.
The answer was surprisingly specific, as cetaceans are almost universally known to be friendly towards humans. However, even a gentle giant can make mistakes, and as we see in the trailer, Abrams’ unpleasant fate is more of an accident than anything else – with the massive sperm whale only trapping the poor diver in the first (and thankfully acid-free) chamber of its stomach due to a mix-up involving a giant squid.
Fortunately for the film’s special effects artists, they can now reference the first-ever footage of a real-life sperm whale chowing down on one such squid, as this freaky recording was released late last year.
1. …With a Catch!
Duffield may be doing his best to recreate the grounded (or is it submerged?) thrills of Kraus’ novel, but there are limits to what can be depicted onscreen while still guaranteeing an entertaining movie. That’s why it’s no surprise that Whalefall will take advantage of certain cinematic parlor tricks as the director tests the limits of both physics and biology so we can actually watch his movie.
For starters, the innards of the whale itself have been greatly exaggerated so there’s enough space to make out the action, and in the spirit of movies like Neil Marshall’s The Descent, there also seems to be plenty of non-diegetic lighting meant to show us what’s going on even if Abram’s character wouldn’t necessarily be able to see anything.
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