Clive Barker’s BOOK OF BLOOD was a series of six books that I read nineteen years ago as a sophomore in High School.  I was reading Barker when others were reading King and Koontz. For some reason, his stories always fascinated me then.  The first book was The Thief of Always, which spiraled into a reading frenzy of all of Baker's novels and short stories.  Lucky for me, my school library carried almost all of Barker's novels.

 When I first heard there was going to be a BOOK OF BLOOD movie, I was wondered how they were going to take such a short story and make it into something worth watching. I then heard that they were going to combine the story with another from book six, On Jerusalem Street: A Postscript.  To be dead honest, I barely remember these stories.  I read them long ago, however, elements of the story did reach out to me, but not as I expected them to.

   The story is about Simon McNeal (Jonas Armstrong), who has psychic powers. A professor employs him at his college, Mary Florescu (Sophie Ward), who, along with her partner in paranormal research, has found the perfect haunted location to communicate with the dead and prove that an afterlife exists.  Mary has a theory that there are highways that bring the souls of the dead to the afterlife and that a certain house is one of the crossroads. However, they all soon will learn that the dead want to be left alone.  They refuse to stop, and the dead make a living Book of Blood of Simon’s skin as they torture him with their visions of their own stories.

   This film lacks in suspense and pace. The only thing that is exciting about it is the last fifteen minutes. From the beginning until the final act, we are bored to death with oddball dream sequences and scenes packed with dialogue that does not advance the film. They story starts well, but stalls very quickly.

   The actors service the story adequately, but are nothing special. The characters are one-dimensional and inspire neither relationship from the audience nor sympathy. The actors do what they can with their parts. The film's strong points are not in its locations and sets, which I found to be under-dressed and simply boring, but in its visual and make-up effects. In some of the scenes, especially toward the end of the film, the effects are great.

BOOK OF BLOOD is a film that I was actually looking forward to seeing this year.  Now that I have seen it, I find myself disappointed. It starts well, but from then on, it is all downhill. The film really bored me. The ending is cool, but by the time it finally comes, around the damage is done. I cannot recommend it to the average horror fan, although Barker fans may be able to appreciate the merit of the story, but they, too, may be disappointed by the film's length and slowness.

- Horror Bob

The Horror Review © Copyright 1999/2009 - Present. All rights reserved.

All Reviews on this website are strictly the opinion of The Horror Review team and do not express the opinion of any one else but their own.

 All films reviewed are copyrighted with their respected owners and the United States Copyright Office.

 Please do not take anything from this site without the permission of The Webmaster