BOOKS OF BLOOD (2020)

Studio:      Hulu
Director:    Brannon Braga
Writer:      Adam Simon, Brannon Braga
Producer:  Joseph Micucci, Michael Mahoney, Jason Clark
Stars:     Britt Robertson, Rafi Gavron, Freda Foh Shen, Nicholas Campbell, Kenji Fitzgerald, Paige Turco, Saad Siddiqui, Brett Rickaby, Yul Vazquez, Anna Friel

Review Score:

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Summary:

A fabled book rumored to be written on human flesh links three tales of psychics, psychosis, and death.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

JENNA

Desperate to escape a mother concerned with her mental health, psychologically troubled college student Jenna Branson goes off her medication and runs away from home. While continuing to suffer from extreme sensitivity to sound, Jenna begins thinking she sees a strange older man following her.

Jenna rents a room at a bed and breakfast run by seemingly kind couple Ellie and Sam. Jenna bonds with Gavin, another guest in the house who is Jenna’s age. Jenna starts having visions of cockroaches as well as paralyzing night terrors where Ellie and Sam kidnap Gavin.

After another encounter with her stalker, Jenna confides in Ellie about her struggles with mental illness and an incident with a boyfriend that caused her to leave school. Ellie assures Jenna she is safe in her home.

Jenna discovers half-dead people with their eyes and ears sewn shut hidden behind the walls and floors of Ellie and Sam’s house. Ellie and Sam capture Jenna. Ellie explains she was a medical practitioner who took it upon herself to turn former patients and current guests, including Gavin, into “vegetables” she and Sam could care for based on a deranged life philosophy.

Jenna’s stalker comes to the house. The man reveals he is Mr. Balsam, who is looking to ask Jenna about her relationship with his son Tony who committed suicide. Ellie and Sam kill Balsam.

Jenna escapes outside and hides in Balsam’s car. Sam puts Balsam’s body in the vehicle and drives it off a cliff not knowing Jenna is inside.

Jenna recovers in a hospital and returns home. Police conclude Balsam tried to kidnap Jenna as part of a murder-suicide plot to take revenge for his son Tony’s death.

Jenna confronts the recollection of intentionally driving Tony to commit suicide. Made further despondent by the memory, Jenna penitently returns to Ellie and Sam. Jenna willingly submits to having her eyes and ears sewn shut as she becomes another body living behind their walls.

MILES

Purported psychic Simon McNeil assures skeptical professor Mary Florensky that he can communicate with Mary’s dead son Miles. Disbelieving Simon’s claim, Mary uses the opportunity to create a teaching experiment out of Simon’s summoning convocation.

Simon’s session, which ends with Simon convulsing after bloody messages mysteriously appear on the control room’s walls, unexpectedly convinces Mary that Simon can communicate with Miles. Mary subsequently falls in love with Simon and their romance turns into a professional partnership.

Some time later, Mary catches Simon having an affair with one of her students. While drunk, Simon confesses that his psychic sessions were staged and he had been conning Mary all along.

Mary has an emotional breakdown in her son’s former bedroom. The message “bring him to us” appears on a blackboard. Mary also sees Miles’s ghost.

Mary forces Simon to perform another convocation for potential investors in their foundation. Ghosts led by Miles painfully mutilate Simon’s flesh until he turns into ‘The Book of Blood.’

BENNETT

Hitman Bennett comes to collect a debt from a bookstore owner. Unable to pay, the bookman instead tells Bennett where he can find the fabled ‘Book of Blood’ in the abandoned town of Ravenmore. Bennett then slashes the bookman’s throat.

In Ravenmore, Bennett’s driver Steve sees haunting visions of a frightening old woman. Entranced by the voice of his dead mother, Steve shoots himself inside a dilapidated church.

Driving by itself, Steve’s car chases Bennett. Bennett goes to the address the bookman gave him, which turns out to be Mary Florensky’s house. With Miles’s ghost at her side, Mary shows Bennett that Simon is the ‘Book of Blood.’ Bennett demands the book at gunpoint. Mary merely points out that Bennett’s name is on Simon’s skin since Bennett’s story is now part of the book.

A swarm of rats chases Bennett outside. Visions cause Bennett to stab himself in the stomach. Bennett flees to Ellie and Sam’s nearby bed and breakfast where he becomes another one of their victims.

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Review:

“From the nightmares of Clive Barker” comes… new stories that were actually written by Adam Simon and Brannon Braga? Uh yeah, that’s not exactly what I wanted or expected out of a purported ‘Books of Blood’ adaptation either.

If you want to buy into the explanation given during press interviews, Hulu’s anthology movie came out of Braga and Barker’s regular sessions of creative kibitzing, making it something of a joint venture. It honestly sounds to me like Braga provided the bulk of the ideas. Barker, who was in the room at the time, nodded approval and maybe nudged a concept this way or that. Voila, collaboration.

I’m not saying I don’t believe Barker had any meaningful input on the project. I’d merely point out he isn’t one of the credited writers and only has an executive producer title, which is often honorific. I think it’s fair to be suspicious about how much involvement Barker actually had. At the very least, I’m not convinced it’s enough to justify a “from the nightmares of Clive Barker” tagline.

That said, Barker’s uncertain role still wouldn’t warrant dismissing Hulu’s “Books of Blood” out of hand. What Clive Barker is to horror, Brannon Braga is to sci-fi. Braga can be considered Barker’s equal in terms of expansive imagination, and he may be second only to Gene Roddenberry as a respected steward of the “Star Trek” franchise. Braga certainly knows how to condense grand spectacle into a small screen format. I’ll be onboard any project where he is at the helm. I just wish “Books of Blood” wasn’t billed as being from Clive Barker when it’s really from Brannon Braga.

With that out of the way, what about this “Books of Blood” movie itself? Well, it certainly shows its roots as something that was alternately talked about as a potential TV series, straight adaptation, or launch pad for new terror tales at various points in development. It’s a confused collection of pieces that struggle to slide together into a creatively cohesive bigger picture. Individually, the three segments also struggle to strike a fair balance between reasonable runtimes and reasonable goals for the stories to accomplish.

The first full segment, “Jenna,” typifies how “Books of Blood’s” stories want to grow legs to explore more space as speculative fiction, then suddenly cut off at the knees when they remember they’re supposed to be shorts. “Jenna” ends up caught in a limbo where it doesn’t have the depth to develop into a feature, yet meanders so overlong that it takes up almost half of the movie’s entire duration.

“Jenna” goes into a lot of detail to establish its key character. Jenna suffers from a disorder that makes her hypersensitive to ordinary sounds such as mastication. She recently returned from a mental institution stay stemming from an unspecified incident with a boy at college. Jenna just quit her medication cold turkey, causing her overbearing mother to threaten another asylum stint. Jenna stops sketching in her book to steal money from mom and mom’s new boyfriend, then hops on a bus toward Los Angeles with no particular plan in mind.

This is a lot to learn about someone for what essentially amounts to a standard story about a possibly psychotic person seeing strange things. An odd older man seems to be stalking Jenna. Cockroaches that may or may not really exist squirm from behind wallpaper at a cozy bed and breakfast. Jenna meets a guy named Gavin who shares a mutual romantic interest. Various characters idly philosophize about growing vegetables, why birds fly, and make more metaphors of iffy relation to the main arc.

While you’re wondering how all of these ancillary asides add up, you discover they don’t. Maybe they did in a previous draft when “Jenna” was conceived as something else. As one-third of “Books of Blood,” everything only culminates in a simple creepshow whose smash-cut conclusion arrives so abruptly, you feel cheated that “Jenna” took you on a trip between two points using the most roundabout route available.

I don’t need to say much about second segment “Miles” because anyone can immediately guess everything there is to the tale strictly from its setup. Yes, this is the story most closely culled from Barker’s books. But if you need a crystal ball to predict what happens to a phony psychic when a real ghost reacts to his scam, you must not have read a typical EC comic before.

That’s kind of the case with “Bennett” too. The film’s opening bookend comes back around for this last bit about a hitman searching for the fabled ‘Book of Blood.’ As with “Jenna,” weird things happen on Bennett’s quest for the terrible tome. Bennett’s wheelman encounters a frightening old woman, hears his dead mother whispering, and feels compelled to commit suicide. Bennett gets chased by a phantom vehicle, a swarm of rats, and unseen shadows that cause him to stab his own stomach. Again, it’s a lot of stuff with little context, adding in questionable connections that strain to shove all three segments into the same shared universe.

Professional performances and a quality production, albeit one that screams TV more than movie, ensure “Books of Blood” can never truly become “bad.” It’s merely mediocre. If this were a weekly series, I’d check it out. It wouldn’t be an event to mark on the calendar or something worth arranging a watch party over. An entire season of episodes would probably pile up in my queue before I remembered they were there. Then I’d turn one on while eating dinner or folding laundry or whatever.

Someday, someone will figure out how to film something like “In the Hills, the Cities” and fans will finally get the dedicated ‘Books of Blood’ adaptation they desire. This “Books of Blood” is not that ‘Books of Blood.’ At no point while watching it did I feel like I was seeing something that came from the same distinct dreamscape that brought us Rawhead Rex, Candyman, Night Breed, and The Midnight Meat Train. This “Books of Blood” is another average anthology that no one would think to connect to Clive Barker if his name weren’t used to promote it.

Review Score: 50

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