Blood Relatives

Not for everyone. Gore hounds will hate it. Those who demand 100 million in special effects or big name celebrities. Those who insist every joke be obvious or have toilet humor or be about sex.

I was pleasantly surprised by this low budget indie. It has an off kilter sense of humor that quickly grows on you. That is, if you're willing to actually listen, pay attention, and don't demand explosions and piles of bodies or you get bored.

The writer deserves to be applauded. So do all the actors, and the principal ones have pretty good comedic timing.

In some ways this reminds me of the original short film for Things We Do In the Shadows.

This was very poorly written and directed, and surprisingly, just bland and boring, and not funny at all. The concept was interesting, but it missed the mark in every other department. The two leads had zero chemistry, I'm sure mostly due to writer, director and lead actor Noah Segan's failure to direct himself and Victoria Moroles properly. The only really convincing actor was C. L. Simpson as Sylvie. Moroles' and Segan's dialogue also felt forced and convoluted, with Segan's occasional high-pitched voice squealing becoming cringe. The story had nothing much out of its basic narrative to offer - nothing really suspenseful or thrilling, or that wasn't cliched and predictable. For a comedy, we never laughed once. A decent effort for actor Segan to newly dabble in filmmaking, but maybe he wore too many hats on this one.

I mean, for a directorial debut it's not that bad. But to be honest, it's kinda boring. I'm not an expert at drama, so I can't really pinpoint what made it boring. Maybe the lack of music? Maybe the lack of background story on the main character, that made the audience having a hard time to care about him? I don't know. I'm not the right person to analyze a drama movie. But I do know that a good drama is the one which doesn't make you wanna fast forward through it. And I did got tempted a few times while watching this. I don't wanna be a jerk, so I'm giving it 5 stars. But I don't recommend this movie to anyone.

First off regardless of a films subject or story, anything that's written, directed and starting the same person virtually never works out well. So why 'Blood Relatives' has a 96% Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, is beyond me... especially after watching the film.

Now lets talk about 'Blood Relatives'. Its largely absent of both foley and diegetic sounds, mainly consisting of just 1-on-1 dialog and the occasional Yiddish(or punk rock) ditty. Which from my perspective, makes the film just feel hollow. The acting itself and cinematography weren't bad at all, and I did appreciate the on location filming over a studio/green-screen production.

However, 'Blood Relatives' ultimately failed to deliver any meaningful substance, I'd call it neither a comedy nor horror. And again, why it has one of the highest Tomato ratings, with 22 Fresh critic reviews, is beyond me. What I can tell you though, is the theme seems to be founded in a mutual consensus of finding the film "charming". The adjective shows up in almost all critic review synopsis'. IMHO that's just a passive-aggressive way of saying it was bad!

This is the Jewish Vampire Dad family movie you didn't know you needed. It's a film with a lot of heart, laughs, a healthy splattering of gore, and one ultimate truth; there's nothing more transformational than becoming a Dad.

Noah Segan's directorial debut does what his buddy Rian Johnson's movie "Looper" did with Time Travel. He manages to do something refreshingly new in a very well worn genre.

Blood Relatives is a remarkably charming film that had me at "Oy Vey" and never let go.

The casting is perfect. Victoria Moroles as Jane is delightful and there is a particularly brilliant turn by Josh Ruben as a "familiar" character.

I've watched this twice and hope the universe Segan has created has room for more stories.