Book of Blood (2009)

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

What starts off suspenseful, interesting and promising becomes repetitive and ultimately a bit absurd. Enjoyable enough for a once off viewing.

I honestly don't know why Clive Barker didn't sue to get his name removed from this terrible disaster of a film, since by all reports it's nothing like his book. It's not because of bad acting; the actors are all at least decent in their parts. It's just that they have absolutely nothing to work with.The premise of the film is stated and restated, over and over again, as if it's a particularly difficult concept to grasp. What really is intolerable is the fact that it's repeated no less than three times within the last five minutes of the film. I'm fairly sure if we've lasted that long, it can either be assumed that we get it more than adequately, or it's far too late to try and drive it home.The story is so incoherent and ridiculous that things seem to just happen for the sake of having something to jazz up a few minutes, but they're so random and pointless that they utterly fail. Even nudity doesn't manage to spice this up. The multiple sex scenes -- which add absolutely nothing whatsoever -- are quite a chore and quite a yawn. It's been quite some time that I've seen a film nudity couldn't help, but this one manages ably.Nothing about the story really makes sense. The characters are poorly-defined and unsympathetic, and things spring up randomly to try and backbuild what should have been established long before it's touched upon. The whole thing reads like a peek into a situation that is neither interesting nor compelling, and it ends up a massive waste of time. The framing story is tied in and becomes even more bizarre and less suited to the rest of the film, but by the time this is made clear, it's too late. You've already watched the rest of this inane slog, you might as well see it through. Unfortunately, it's nothing new or interesting, and it's devoid of any of the (strangely) erotic elements that Barker typically tries to work into his writing. Instead, it's all dull as a beige room.The music is forgettable most of the time. Otherwise it ends up sounding out of place and distracting, which is easy to do since the scene you're watching won't be interesting enough to keep your attention. Unfortunately, whoever did the sound production made it another one of those films where you struggle to listen to the dialogue, but the effects and screams are ridiculously loud.The cinematography can be summed up in one word: grey. Everything is grey. Everyone is grey. Every event is grey, every effect is grey. It doesn't help to make an already incredibly boring affair any more interesting.Poor pacing, incoherent and dull script, and bad sound can't be helped by good actors, especially when they're limited by what they have to work with in the script. Don't waste your time on this one. It has some interesting concepts, which I can assume are the only things that were really taken from the source material, but it does nothing interesting with them. This might have worked decently as a short film, but it has no business pushing two hours of length with its story that nobody was waiting to hear.

Driven to arrive at a secluded mansion, a paranormal investigator and a psychic find that the house sits at a location where souls pass through to the afterlife and that the dead want their story told but require human skin in order to tell it to others.This here had a lot of potential but ultimately it really let itself down big time with several really big flaws that shouldn't have been there. The biggest blunder comes in the first minutes of the film where it gives off the secret right away, so it's not exactly a surprise what happens within the film, building up to something that's fairly obvious. Also, the film's incredibly long running time leaves a lot to be desired, as this one has a lot of useless running time that could've been trimmed without losing anything of any importance, and there's several plot lines that could've benefited greatly from this due to the removal or trimming done. Still, the theme of what's going on, the outstanding, if limited, gore effects to realize them and a rather intense last half where it's confined to the large Gothic mansion really bring this one up a notch. Not too bad, but could use some minor work.Rated R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and frequent Male Nudity.

I am a huge Clive Barker fan, but this is a weak adaptation. It is hard to stretch a very short story into a full-length film. Still, this script could have maintained the intelligence of the story better and the direction could have communicated Barker's distressing world view better. I have three main gripes. First, the story's focus: the film turns the original story's dysfunctional mentor relationship between the older female researcher and the younger male medium into a full blown, treacly love story. Ugh! Second, the tone: many scenes feature little more than furtive glances, longing looks, or sudden, eruptive declarations of love/hatred, which makes the movie too often feel more like a telenovela or an episode of Red Shoe Diaries than a horror film.Third, the film's vision of the supernatural: in the short story, the "ghosts" gleefully wreak havoc on the living. In the film, they just want to be heard. As if this diminished characterization of the avenging spirits weren't cloying enough, the film features a very long parade of see-through CGI phantoms, all of whom look like they just marched over from Disney's Haunted Mansion: "Run to the light, Carol Anne. Mommy is in the light!" Despite my complaints, the film has flashes of true Barker-- the young girl being flayed as her parents helplessly watch, the creepy séance scenes (hey- wasn't that Pinhead?), and the film's framing story (where Jonas Armstrong gets the chance to show that he can indeed act). Also, the film makes great use of Edinburgh locations to create an unrelentingly bleak Barkeresque atmosphere. It also makes great use of Jonas Armstrong's sumptuous, lacerated, naked body to generate the kind of exquisitely wrong homoeroticism that is pure Barker.