Movie Review: Blood Creek (2009)

Directed by Joel Schumacher

Starring Henry Cavill, Dominic Purcell and Emma Booth I was actually pretty excited reading the trailer for this, Nazi's, zombies, and occult hi-jinx are all some of my favorite ice cream flavors. And when I saw that Dominic Purcell (Prison Break) was in it, I knew at least one bad guy would be getting punched in the face so I decided to give it a shot.

Buy Blood Creek on DVD



The first 10-15 minutes actually had me pretty excited about this flick, it starts out in black & white, the year is 1938 and a German immigrant family living on a farm in West Virginia gets a letter from the Mother Country saying they have been carefully selected to be a host for a German scholar looking to do research on German history in America, only what they get instead is a crazed Nazi occult witchdoctor dude with the ability to bring living things back to life with the help of a large rune stone which has been built into the foundation of the families barn.

Cut to present day, the film is now in color and it pretty much goes to shit from this point forward. The character played by Dominic Purcell has escaped from the farm after being held captive for 2 years by the family and used as a blood vending machine to help feed the Nazi witchdoctor. He finds his brother and together they return to the farm to exact revenge for his abduction. Once there though, they soon realize its not going to be as easy as they had thought, the Nazi guy is actually a supernatural man/monster who can turn any dead body into a zombie slave capable of doing his bidding.

When it comes to director Joel Schumacher's films, the first thing I always wonder is, which Schumacher are we going to get this time? Is it the one who gave us The Lost Boys? Or is it the one who gave us Batman Forever and that unforgivable Batman costume with the Kevlar nipples on it? Unfortunately we got the Kevlar nipples Schumacher this time around. The film did move at a good pace, I will say that but the plot which starts out decent enough turns into a complete re-hashing of a hundred other movies and even the villain looks like a total rip-off of the monster from Jeepers Creepers (minus the cool wings). The one scene I really wanted to enjoy was the one in which the Nazi monster dude slashes a horses throat and turns it into a zombie-horse. The horse bursts through a kitchen window of the farm house, starts gnawing on one of the occupants and snatches him out the window. Zombie-horse then knocks the door down and begins reigning down horse-shoe covered hell on the family & two brothers. What could have been a pretty cool and exciting scene was completely destroyed though by horrible CGI effects used for the gunshot wounds when everyone is taking potshots at the horse. The gore-level overall was pretty light and the effects were disappointing to say the least. Emma Booth is crazy-hot but we don't even get a cleavage shot out of her so my first thought is, why hire a super hottie to play the role and then not even treat us to anything below her neck? Mr. Schumacher, you sir, are an asshole.

Lions Gate Films has pretty much mastered the art of mid-level budgeted mediocre horror movies. Blood Creek is just another in the long line of their films you will see in the bargain-bin at your local Walmart. The casual horror fan might like this but aficionado's of the genre will find nothing here of substance, I am sorry to report.

5 out of 10

Reviewed by KennyB