Movies
Life Blood (Pearblossom) (V)
“The problem is that apparently Ron Carlson only had about 15-minutes of stuff to say. The tragedy is that we had to go along for the ride to find that out.”
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A pair of beautiful lesbians (Sophie Monk & Anya Lahiri) go to a New Year’s Eve party in 1968. One of them kills an up-and-coming actor before he has a chance to rape another girl. They head off into the desert night where they encounter God in the form of a woman who promises them eternal life if they are allowed to be reborn as angels with the promise to fight evil on earth. Then God tells Lahiri to suck her blood and 40-years later the beautiful women wake from their cocoons on the side of that dusty highway as Vampires.
What’s that? You’ve never heard that one before. Do you know why you’ve never heard that before? Because, that’s gotta be one of the most whacked-out and sickly interesting premises I’ve heard of for a vampire movie in ages. Lesbian Vampires fighting evil in God’s name! Sign me up for that.
Of course, in the movie there’s a big catch. And, just like that, the actual flick has a big catch too. The big catch is….It’s really lame.
What makes matters worse is that Writer/Director Ron Carlson not only blows a great concept, he blows what has to be the weirdest and wildest cast I’ve seen assembled in forever for a film that has absolutely zero buzz about it. First off we get the insanely gorgeous Sophie Monk as Brooke–a vamp even before she was sucking blood and crisping skin in the sunlight. Add to that a bizarre collection of cameos from Halloween’s Scout Taylor-Compton, Grindhouse’s Electra Avellan (who combined have about 8 lines of dialogue between them) along with a scenery-chewing turn from cult film star Charles Napier as the sheriff investigating the dead bodies that keep piling up. And finally, The Sandlot’s Patrick Renna as the register-jockey working behind the counter at a gas station named “Murder World” who gets caught up in Monk and Lahiri’s mess. Oh…how could I forget… How I Met Your Mother fans will perk up with joy at the sight of everyone’s favorite cab driver Ranjit (Marshall Manesh) as the father of Avellan–another unfortunate patron of the Murder World gas station.
The crux of the film lies in the fact that Monk is clearly the bad girl and Lahiri is the good girl. God never makes much sense about why Monk is allowed to be turned into a vampire–but there is a ton of foreshadowing about what (seems obvious to everyone) Lahiri is gonna have to end up doing about it. The rest of the film is just biding time to get to the foregone conclusion. For a film that promises lesbians and vampires we only get just about enough of either one to justify their inclusion. And in the bloodshed department, the film defers to a lot of necking but not much else. Of course none of that would matter one single bit if the film delivered on the promise of an interesting plot. Instead what we get is a filmmaker whose idea of a character arc is a straight line from point A to point B. So, all that leaves us with is a pair of underdeveloped, over-angsty pretty girls trapped in a gas station. And trapped in a gas station is also where we wind up, as after the first 15 minutes or so, the film sets up shop in one location and more or less spends the rest if its time stuck between the aisles. For a flick with so little plot development to begin with, locking the cast up Reservoir Dogs-style is tantamount to cinematic suicide. These characters don’t have the charisma to carry a talkathon–a point that is made painfully clear as the dialogue eventually devolves into little more than bitching and moaning about being stuck inside said gas station and Monk’s eventual stalkeriffic banter (Things like….”you’ve got nowhere to hide”. Well, no shit sweetie, the whole store is only about 800 square feet!!!).
I think I’m so disappointed by Life Blood because in the beginning – right after God comes down from the sky and starts promising eternal life to Lahiri, then making out with her, then turning her into a bloodsucking angel of death – I thought “Wow, here is a filmmaker that has something interesting and new to say about the Vampire sub-genre.” The problem is that apparently Ron Carlson only had about 15-minutes of stuff to say. The tragedy is that we had to go along for the ride to find that out.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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