I love vampire, but I haven’t seen a decent movie about them since Blood Trap. After decades of films about the undead blood-suckers lining home media shelves, the genre’s gotten a little stale. While the vampire’s very distant cousin, the zombie, has managed to re-invent itself every few years, vampires are always just… vampires. So, as a reviewer it’s difficult to review a movie like Aaron’s Blood because it to has been done before in the guise of Let the Right One In/Let Me In. Hell, even “Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ had a minor recurring villain that was a pint-sized terror. I’m obviously talking about child vampires. And while other reviews have been stellar across the board, I can’t help but to shrug my shoulders and think “eh.”
It’s not that Aaron’s Blood is bad or boring. It’s just… there. Again, we’ve already seen this plot before in much more effective ways. We’ve seen child vampires and master vampires and vampire hunters and the unfortunate families who are caught in the crossfires. A lot of other reviews are making Aaron’s Blood out to be this boundary breaking, metaphorically charged suspense-thriller, but I didn’t get that out of my viewing. Maybe I missed the point completely? The problem is – when I have a more disturbed reaction to characters donating blood in the very beginning of the movie than anything else that goes down, that’s a cause for concern. That means even the emotional hook of a father watching his only son turn into a blood-sucking field wasn’t enough to hold my attention. Why? Because it’s been done before.
I think a major part of my lack of interest stems from the casting. The two leads were not right for their roles, in my opinion. The young boy can play a bullied hemophiliac well and the adult male can play an endearing father with the best of ’em, but anything outside of that falls flat. Both performers were always one step behind the emotional reaction that was needed, almost as if they were as bored as I was. This sucks because Aaron’s Blood had potential to be something better. The locker room accident that sent Tate to the hospital is actually pretty relate-able when you like at the condition of middle schoolers in America today. The film poses two important questions – could you betray your only child if it meant saving his life, and how does life go back to normal after you’ve seen true evil? As a production, Aaron’s Blood is absolutely deserving of its distribution deal and is a solid piece of cinema. Unfortunately, it’s nothing ground-breaking and putters out before it gets good, but I can’t knock it for professionalism.
As far as the horror elements go, Aaron’s Blood isn’t very scary, but it will be appealing to vampire fans. That’s really the only demographic I can recommend this one to. It’s gory and has a ton of vampire violence. The viewer gets all the cliche vampire attributes while receiving a modern twist. And this one even has a slightly higher body count than I was expecting. James Martinez (“House of Cards”), Trevor Stovall, Michael Chieffo (The Ring 2), Farah White, David Castellvi, Michael Peach, Laurie Seymour, Luke Barnett (“MANswers”), Michael Lopez, Noah Heekin and Olivia Reinhold star in this horror-drama from writer/director Tommy Stovall. It’s a decent vampire movie with a lot of potential, but ultimately it was dead on arrival. Again, i only think vampire fans would take a bite out of this one. Don’t believe the hype, folks. Final Score: 5 out of 10.
