BLOOD CHILD (2017)

Studio:      Random Media
Director:    Jennifer Phillips
Writer:      Jennifer Phillips
Producer:  Jennifer Phillips
Stars:     Alyx Melone, Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie, Charlotte Cattell, Biden Hall, Lisa Kovack, Coco Uiga, Tara Chitaroni

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Terrifying consequences haunt a young mother in mourning when she turns to black magic and begins raising a ghost child.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Living in Singapore due to her husband Bill’s job, Ashley DiAngelo tragically loses her unborn baby after the fetus violently self-aborts. Deep in mourning, Ashley tasks her Indonesian housekeeper Siti with finding a witch doctor known as a ‘bomoh’ who can perform a black magic ritual that will allow her to raise a ghost child.

Once brought to the bomoh, Ashley agrees to conditions that include wearing a vial of fetus oil around her neck, maintaining a shrine for a statue where the ghost child can live, and feeding blood to the ghost on the 14th of every month. The bomoh delivers one more warning, but Siti chooses not to translate it. The bomoh performs the ritual. Ashley names her ghost child Anna and begins caring for it in secret with Siti’s help.

Eleven months after the miscarriage, Bill and Ashley move back to Minneapolis and bring Siti with them. Bill begins seeing fleeting glimpses of Anna and regularly notices other things amiss such as dirt on the floor, a strange smell in the den, odd noises, the statue occasionally appearing inside the house, and Ashley speaking to an invisible presence. Ashley’s friend and neighbor Naomi has similar experiences while inside the home.

Ashley excitedly reveals to Bill that she is pregnant again. Bill’s visions of Anna’s ghost begin intensifying, as do other instances of seemingly supernatural activity.

Ashley’s mother Renee comes to stay at the house. She too begins experiencing haunting visions of Anna, smelling rotting flesh in the den, and seeing a ghostly couple stalking the home from outside. Ashley finds herself having to admonish the ghost child more often.

Bill, Ashley, and Renee host dinner for Naomi and several other friends. While the group remains at the table, Naomi follows a vision and ends up locked inside a bathroom by Anna. Naomi’s screams alarm everyone. Once freed, Naomi blames the incident on Siti, whom she has long distrusted. The party breaks up.

That night, Ashley has an experience of being nearly drowned in the bathtub as well as a nightmare of Anna eating her unborn baby. Anna also appears to Ashley’s mother while Renee sleeps in her bed.

Naomi notices ghostly hands around Ashley’s waist in a group photo taken at dinner. Drawn to her window, Naomi spies Siti ritualistically burning items in front of the statue outside. When she later investigates, Naomi finds a phone with pictures revealing the bomoh’s black magic ritual and Anna’s creation.

Unable to find Naomi the next morning, Ashley goes to her house and uncovers laptop surveillance video of Naomi seemingly attacked by an invisible presence. Renee discovers evidence of the bomoh ritual and rushes to pull Ashley out of Naomi’s house with a warning that they are not safe there.

After acknowledging a stronger stench in the house and having an awkward dinner conversation during which she and Bill propose removing the stone statue, Renee calls Raphael, who is an expert on Southeast Asian mysticism. Renee explains the situation in the house along with other odd things she has observed.

Bill has more visions of Anna. He also has multiple nightmares involving his wife and the ghost child.

After a foreboding video depicting her dead in the bathtub appears on her tablet, Renee confronts her daughter about the unholy evil in the house. Renee demands to know everything, but Ashley refuses to tell her. Visions and odd noises continue.

Ashley collapses from intense internal pain. Her doctor comes to the house and advises that Ashley will be fine. Meanwhile, a jar placed in front of the statue outside falls and breaks.

Renee privately tells Bill about the ghost child, warning that Anna sees the new baby as a threat and she will destroy anyone who gets in her way. Bill refuses to take the idea seriously.

Ashley has another vision of Anna eating her unborn baby. Siti interrupts. Ashley reminds Siti that it is the 14th, prompting Siti to go outside to the statue. Ashley hears a newscast report that Naomi was found drowned in a presumed suicide.

Siti returns in a panic to show Ashley the broken jar. Siti confesses that she never told her the bomoh’s final warning that Ashley could never get pregnant again if she was going to care for Anna. Now that contract is broken. Ashley takes the broken pieces and hurries outside to dig in the dirt.

Anna traps Bill and Renee inside the house. Renee explains more about the ghost child to Bill, adding that the vial of fetus oil and stone statue must be destroyed before midnight otherwise Anna will get stronger when it becomes the 14th of the month.

Anna confronts Ashley as she digs. The two of them embrace, but Ashley pushes Anna away with a proclamation that she isn’t her mother. Anna attacks, initiating a violent struggle that causes Ashley to experience several flashbacks.

Ashley recovers from the vision to find herself committed in an asylum with schizophrenia and caring for a doll she thinks is a child. Siti observes Ashley from the other side of her room’s door before walking away holding hands with Anna.

---

Review:

The disclaimer opening “Blood Child” scratches the scalp in more ways than one. Text at the top purports the film’s “story is based on true events that took place in South East Asia and the United States some years ago,” with the usual addendum of names having been changed to protect identities and whatnot.

This seems a spectacularly specious claim to make since “Blood Child’s” premise involves a mournful mother using black magic to sire a ghost child whose hauntings result in murder. I don’t doubt that superstitious rituals involving ghost children exist or that maybe an actual person was driven mad by fantasies of a zombie girl killing her family and friends. But if “Blood Child” insists on saying its supernatural tale really happened as depicted, the only rational reaction is to call “bullsh*t.”

Additionally odd is a statement that “the sequence of events has been told in exactly the way that it occurred.” What’s bizarre about that is “Blood Child’s” backstory unfolds via nonlinear flashbacks scattered along a timeline starting in the present, jumping back eleven months, then returning to the present with concurrent side-stories occasionally cutting in as well. So if this sequence of events truly is “exactly the way that it occurred,” then it appears the people involved had access to a TARDIS or a DeLorean too.

If I’m going to criticize “Blood Child” for its writing, and I am, focus should fall off this pre-title bit and onto the script, which is no less choppily composed without regard for what is being relayed or how. “Blood Child” creates characters who like their act one dialogue to consist entirely of exposition, telling other people things they already know purely for the audience’s benefit. As pedestrian as this is, it’s preferable to how information is lazily delivered later, like when someone literally stumbles upon a iPhone on the ground featuring an unlocked stream of secret photos, or when a woman searching for her friend serendipitously finds an open laptop with convenient bedroom camera surveillance footage revealing exactly what happened. Since we’re already accepting homicidal ghost children and time travel as “true events,” what would a few deus ex machinas hurt?

Having apparently never seen “Pet Sematary,” Ashley’s bright idea to get over the death of her unborn baby involves an appeal to Asian mysticism. Helping point her toward the right witch doctor is Ashley’s Indonesian housekeeper Siti, a person so stereotypically portrayed by ending every broken English sentence with a nasally “ma’am,” the only way her role could be any more culturally insensitive is if she were played by Mickey Rooney. The rapid-fire rate of rude remarks routinely hurled at Siti without any bystander batting a lash might be comical if it weren’t so carelessly racist at the same time.

Rivaling Ashley in the dimwitted decision-making department is her mother Renee. Over the course of visiting Ashley and her husband Bill for several days, Renee can’t make up her mind regarding whether she should push the issue of the ghost girl who appears in her bed to whisper “get out,” or let it sit and see if the dilemma settles itself. The only explanation for Renee alternately knowing every dark deed her daughter did to bring evil into the house and then only worrying about what’s for dinner is that she must be afflicted with Alzheimer’s.

Bill doesn’t do any better. He sees a barfly going down on him morph into a decomposing girl, witnesses his wife talking to an invisible child, and can’t shake nightly visions of the ghost who also makes footstep noises in the shadows. Yet when Renee suggests a pintsized phantom is in their midst, Bill tells her to take a hike and pack her nutty notions along for the trip.

Characterizations are inconsistent. Basic blandness chokes every spoken word. Completing this unholy trinity of structural stutters is acting so charmless, I’ve waited until now to mention perhaps the film’s most fatal flaw because I futilely hoped to delicately dance around it.

The least blunt way to describe the cast’s convincingness would be to say I would believe “Blood Child” is a true story before I’d believe any one of its actors as an authentic person. As Ashley, Alyx Melone can cry on cue, but there is no substance behind any beat. She resembles Alex Essoe, yet exhibits neither chemistry with her counterparts nor charisma during solo scenes. Actresses like Lisa Kovack (Renee) and Cynthia Lee MacQuarrie (Siti) turn in better work, except their parts are so poorly put together that their personas read as ridiculous.

Although it doesn’t come across in what’s written above, I genuinely hate to be this harsh on a microbudget indie production. “Blood Child” puts sincere commitment into its well-intentioned effort. And it at least adds a dash of occult culture that isn’t commonly known or employed in horror films. Unfortunately, compliments end there.

In addition to a scattered screenplay and awkward acting, an unsettled camera and interior settings with blown out windows combine for an unsightly amateur aesthetic. It isn’t enjoyable to tell the truth in this instance, even though “true” has a flexible definition where this film is concerned. As an entertaining, scary, engaging, or commercially competitive feature, “Blood Child” simply can’t cut it.

Review Score: 30

---