Blood Star (2024)

Blood Star (2024) It just three-stars good. It’s a road movie doubled as a psychological thriller, on the roads of New Mexico, which frankly brings nothing new to the genre. Nonetheless, it’s effective, with no downtime, even if it’s not always enjoyable to watch. Nice, but far from incredible.

In fact, what made it difficult for me to watch is that almost all the characters are unbearable. Except for Sydney Brumfield as Amy, but she doesn’t last very long!

Britni Camacho isn’t the actress of the century, although I can see that she does her best. But that doesn’t make her a bad actress. It doesn’t help that her character makes a lot of stupid choices. How can you not ask for help from people you meet in a restaurant when a madman is chasing you? Of course, you’d be afraid of looking like a madman, especially if the psychopath in question is a well-known Sheriff and not someone known for his sadism.
And how do you react to someone who shoots at you, who blows out a tyre, but who himself brings the car back with a mechanic and the repaired tyre, acting as if nothing had happened?

And we always know exactly what’s going to happen to all the characters we meet along the way!

As for John Schwab, this is not the place to find out if he’s a good actor. This American actor, television producer and musician lives in London. He wears glasses for a whole hour in this film. It’s hard to judge the performance of someone whose eyes you can’t see. Once the glasses are removed, the film turns into a Horrific Thriller.

It’s directed by Lawrence Jacomelli in his directorial debut, from a script he wrote with Victoria Taylor and George Kelly and based on the short story Don’t Look Back.

There are some Tarantino-esque moments… but given that I’m not a fan of this kind of cinema, it won’t be totally unforgettable in my mind. Yes, there are bullets in the head that cause blood to splatter out of windows, as well as mutilation.

Unbelievable: Blood Star premiered at the Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival in Switzerland on 9 July 2024 and was released in the UK on 7 October 2024 by Plaion. It’s bad enough that Switzerland isn’t known for making good films, but now they have to show a very average American film!

This film reminded me of many others, such as The Hitcher (1986), and its 2007 remake, as well as slightly derivative films like Highway Hitcher (1998). Otherwise, I’m constantly thinking of Timber Falls (also from 2007), but from there it’s straight into “Saw”, “Hostel” and “The Hills Have Eyes”.

I admit that I was looking for the pleasure of Alone (2020) when I embarked on this feature film. But I didn’t really find it here. On the other hand, Don’t Move (2024) was really good in the same year.

So much for my review!

Finally, here’s a description of the film I found on a German website.
Read it only if you don’t mind spoilers!

“In the sun-scorched solitude of New Mexico, young Bobbi is on her way along the scorching highway through the desert towards the West Coast. An innocuous stop in the middle of nowhere leads to her fateful encounter with Sheriff Bilstein a more than a little strange cop, who shortly afterwards arrests Bobbie for speeding. But this is just the beginning of a nightmare on the road, during which the young woman must flee again and again from the cruel psychological games of her sadistic persecutor. The conscience-less sheriff leaves behind a trail of blood and despair, and the deeper Bobbi plunges into the murderer’s dark realm, the more she must realise that the path to redemption lies only in her own hands. To survive the night, the hunted becomes the hunter. And logically so…

Blood Star is director Lawrence Jacomelli’s first feature-length film, and he surprises from the outset with an intense horrific road movie whose tried-and-tested ingredients here form a new whole: in sun-drenched images, cold horror presents itself with an almost sterile casualness, only to drop the mask a little later.

Britni Camacho (Amazon’s I’m a Virgo) plays the perfect Final Girl with convincing panic, while John Schwab, as a murderous, good-natured desert sheriff, pales in comparison to many other cinematic psychopaths. Blood Star is a modern terror thriller, as it should be these days!”

In conclusion: A film to avoid… unless, of course, you like to see pretty women being tortured! But the ending really suited me, because it’s not too dark…