Blood Fest (2018)


REVIEWER RATING: 
6/10

DIRECTOR:


Blood Fest is the latest meta movie to come out of the genre, borrowing ideas from several past releases, specifically 2012's Cabin in the Woods. In this movie we follow a group of geeky genre fans as they attend a new outdoors horror festival, only to discover that the ultraviolent deaths they're witnessing are real and the event's host has a far more diabolical agenda behind the gathering of all these sweaty movie nerds.

The film actually boasts a pretty cool concept, especially if something like this actually existed in real life (minus the real deaths of course). It's essentially a large outdoor festival where sections are separated based on theme. For instance one part of the festival will be centered on creepy clowns, while another may focus on vampires or zombies. Meanwhile, there are also live acts and booths for games, food and merchandise. In other words it's heaven for us horror fans; at least it seems that way until people start getting cut to pieces by various chainsaw-wielding masked assailants and ultimately causing mass panic within the park.

While the movie plays with various different themes it still tries its hardest to stay somewhat grounded in reality by explaining that all the villains in the park are regular people that have been brainwashed to believe that they really are what they're pretending to be. So when the leads encounter vampires in the movie we're led to believe that they're actually just brainwashed fans with fake sharp teeth and a thirst for blood. And the zombies? They're legit corpses that are somehow electronically controlled by a bunch of clueless gamers that think they're playing a new zombie game (*rolls eyes*).

It all unfolds as silly and it sounds and unfortunately leads to some of the movie's biggest plot-holes, but that didn't stop the filmmakers from saving the biggest plot-hole for towards the end when all is finally revealed. Though honestly if you ignore these faults and accept the movie as a silly no-brainer popcorn flick then you won't be entirely disappointed. It's decently-paced and there's a good amount of blood and gore in parts. And the concept is still somewhat fresh and fun. The jokes are often hit or miss, but it was fun pointing out the many nods the film has to some genre favs.

OVERALL: 
Blood Fest proves to be better in concept than in execution, but still remains to be fairly entertaining, especially if you can ignore some of the glaring plot-holes.


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