Writer/directors Trevor Styles and Chas Llewellyn set their sites pretty high when they decided to make The Blood Hunter. An extremely bloody vampire film with loads of action, done on a budget of $24,000. Surprisingly they managed to pull it off with a film that delivers way more than you’d expect given the budget and the cast and crew’s relative lack of experience.
Deckard (Tom Paxinos, Projectile: The Movie) has an unhappy ex wife, a son that doesn’t think much of him. He also has PTSD and spends his money on booze even though he’s behind on the rent. He thinks his luck might be changing when a couple of hot women come knocking on their door looking for help and starting to get very friendly. But it’s not to be. They do want to suck him and his roommate, but not in they way they’d like.
One vampiric home invasion later his roommate and one of the women are dead. He’s a bloody mess and has the vampire’s leader Caleb (Chas Llewellyn) swearing revenge for the death of one of his clan. So much for his luck changing. At least until he falls in with a group of vampire killers, The Blood Hunters. He’s more than happy to help Vinnie, (Timothy Patrick Quill, Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money, The Trees Have Eyes), Moxie, (Amy Truax) and the rest kick some undead ass.
With a plot that’s best described as Near Dark crossed with John Carpenter’s Vampires, this isn’t a film that’s long on traditional bloodsuckers and scares. The Blood Hunter is however filled with action scenes and lots and lots of blood. If you’ve seen Leif Jonker’s Darkness then you have an idea what to expect. Vampires don’t crumble into dust, they explode and coat the walls with blood. Not just stakes but guns and chainsaws come into play against the undead. Sunlight works as well, at least on some of them.
The effects in The Blood Hunter are practical and well done. The bullet hits for once don’t look to be CGI nor do the burn effects. Which is a big deal for me as crappy CGI has ruined so many low budget films for me over the years. That’s one advantage of a low budget, it can force filmmakers to go low tech and old school.
At an hour and forty five minutes The Blood Hunter could have been trimmed a little, especially as there’s a bit of clunky dialogue in it. But, as I said earlier, it’s way better than what I was expecting.
The Blood Hunter is currently looking for festival dates and possible distribution deals.