Film Review: Blooded (2011)

SYNOPSIS:

A group of hunters (and their girlfriends) on a hunting trip are targeted by an animal rights organization. The hunters are drugged, stripped down to their underwear, separated in the freezing wilderness, and hunted down one-by-one like the poor animals they have killed in the past. It seems that the animal rights organization opposes hunting and wants to make an example of the group of hunters to discourage others from going out and hunting animals in the future. It seems that the hunters have become the prey, and none of them may make it out alive.

REVIEW:

Playing “Duck Hunt” on the original Nintendo Entertainment System when I was in high school is the closest I have ever come to hunting. To be honest I just don’t get it and have no desire to ever go out and shoot a defenseless animal just for sh*ts and giggles. Since I am such a huge animal person I am totally against hunting, and as such I had a lot of trouble feeling sympathy for any of the hunters in this film. It was very hard for me to like any of the people who are supposed to be the protagonists, and I quickly found myself rooting for the animal rights group to blow the hunters away.

I knew very little about the movie before I saw it and after I did a little research on it on the Internet I thought that the premise sounded promising. It could have been pretty good but unfortunately it ends up becoming a boring mess of a pro-hunting film. Nothing really that exciting happens and for the biggest majority of the movie I was bored to tears. It isn’t really what I would call a horror film (it is more of a drama), but considering the premise you would think that at least something halfway exciting would happen before the end credits started to roll, but this just isn’t the case. We are treated to countless scenes of unattractive people running around in the wilderness in their underwear while nameless “bad guys” in sky masks and camouflage jackets shoot at them. If this sounds like something you would like to see over and over again then this movie is for you.

If you are looking for cool death scenes then I would advise you to avoid “Blooded” like the plague. I don’t want to spoil anything for viewers reading this review who still want to see it, but let’s just say that if you are expecting a staggering body count from this movie then you are going to be very disappointed. There is virtually no gore at all to be found here (other than when a deer is shot and has its guts ripped out) and for a movie about a group of people being hunted down that is just ridiculous. Apparently the filmmakers were more concerned with getting their message across that it was okay to hunt than they were with making a good movie, but they could have at least put a little effort into it.

I think that the biggest problem that I had with it other than the fact that it is boring and nothing worth mentioning ever happens is the overall portrayal of the animal rights group. They are basically shown as being violent terrorist types who enjoy terrorizing “innocent” people in order to get their message across. I don’t want to get in my soap box here, but this is a totally Ignorant and backward ass way to look at most animal rights activists. I support animal rights and I would never do anything even remotely close to what the anti-hunting people do in this film. To be honest it is a bit insulting to anyone who has ever fought for animal rights.

I’m just glad I didn’t have a whole lot of hope for “Blooded” before I watched it, so as such I wasn’t too let down by it. It is basically a hunting propaganda film and while the screenwriter James Walker claims to be neutral on the subject of hunting it is pretty obvious after watching the movie that he has a pretty strong opinion on the matter after all. Skip this movie if you run across it; believe me when I say it has little to no redeeming qualities about it at all.