Here For Blood (2023)
Wrestle with the consequences
Fun fact, but I’m writing this up on a Wednesday instead of my normal Thursday. Why am I doing this? Because my normal night might end up being busy and I’d rather have something ready early then skipping it or getting it done late. Anyways, I had to decide on something to watch with no real plan or anything outside of being kind of tired from all this dang cold, so I thought we’d just hit a movie that i saw once already and was pretty fun - although I guess you’ll need to wrestle with waiting until the end to see if I thought it was good and fun. This time around, the babysitter fights back - tonight, we are Here for Blood.
The plot is pretty simple here, but it leaves a lot of room for activities. Some strangers are going around murdering college girls, as is typical in a horror movie. A babysitter has fallen behind in studying for some test action, and manages to convince her wrestler boyfriend to tag in to babysit for her while she puts in some elbow grease to get that extra learning on because it’s real important to her to pass this test. Of course, being a nice hunky ring guy, he begrudgingly does it. Turns out, this is really one of the best things that could have happened, because guess whose house has been targeted by killers? You got it, the one he’s at - only the killers aren’t aware that their sparring partner for the night has been swapped out to an absolute piledriver. In this cage match, it’s a little hard to tell just whose locked in there with who!
Acting is alright. At no point did I sit there and just go “oh my lord that’s so bad!” That being said, it also very much benefits from me looking at it’s description and just assuming it was going to be pretty B movie, because it has some pretty corny reactions and deliveries in here. If you have some friends around watching, it’s almost guaranteed to be a good time, but even as a solo watch the actors do a good job of playing into their role and making it fun. The casting is pretty good as well - you don’t see anyone and feel like they are out of place. Sometimes the actors might even impress you - I feel like particularly with chemistry a lot of times in this movie the groups really just click and feel pretty solid.
The characters are a bit more straight forward I feel. Nobody really feels all that much like they are breaking out of their given role or type, and the real biggest shake up is more the premise of the wrestler being a babysitter in the situation. There is a bit of a twist or two with a handful of characters, and I admit it doesn’t always feel like it’s foreshadowed enough to really call it a twist - but considering it could have just gone super duper cookie cutter it’s nice that they did try mixing some stuff up here and there when it comes to the cultist killers. They may not be anything that blows your mind, but at least it keeps itself relatively focused with it.
Brains and brawn.
Interestingly enough, the movie ends up being more comedy and action than it does horror. I mean, yeah, we get the home invasion kind of thing, but the simple act of “okay, and now it’s a wrestler” really flips a lot of things around. They don’t make our lead macho-sitter invulnerable and that helps keeps things somewhat balanced in the real of believability. It doesn’t stop it from being less funny with some of the stuff that happens, be it a snappy audio line, a joke, or some good old slapstick. Of course, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t point out that comedy is subjective, so just because I got some chuckles in or found something funny doesn’t mean someone else will - but if you align with my sensibilities you shouldn’t find yourself burdened with non-enjoyment even if you aren’t exactly peeing yourself from laughing so hard because of a curse word joke. Yeah, even the kid gets in on that.
Effects actually get quite a lot to do. Between murder and mutilation, there is plenty of the title promised blood. There’s nothing too graphic for the most part either despite it - although there is a decapitation in there. It’s just nothing really guts and zombies as much as it is old samurai movies with blood spraying everywhere. Maybe you still shouldn’t show it to super young kids, but it’s not like you’ll probably lose your lunch watching it either. Costumes are a mix - largely modern day style attires, but our villains do get to have some fun masks to set them apart from each other and each character bad or not has their own look that stands out from the rest to make for easy identifying. Most stuff here, for better and worse, are practical effects, and although it all looks really clean and crisp, I once again hearken back to my original though of it sounding like a fun B movie and how that just sets me up to only be pleasantly surprised when anything - like image quality - exceeds what I expected from it. Granted, minor stab wounds and burn prosthetics all stand up fine and I don’t think most will really find much to complain about there, but by the end and getting into the really wild stuff I could certainly see a few different spots where folks might start calling me crazy saying it’s not a bad effect.
Audio is fine. Sometimes deliveries are a bit wild, but then again so is the movie sometimes. Music does the same thing it always does for me - helps out scenes then vanishes from my brain like it never existed by the time credits roll around. Humorously enough, although I don’t really recognize any of the actors from this there was one voice that sounded kind of familiar to me - and when I looked it up it turns out it’s the head Twisted Sister himself, so there’s a little audio bonus for you. When it comes to stuff for the thinking person, I’m mostly leaving this up for people to figure out themselves. I mean, there’s plenty of little elements in there what with cult killer interactions, or babysitter and kid interactions, but I also don’t know if I would go as far as to say that any of them really feel like standout commentary or anything. I feel like the biggest thing is about roles - like why babysitters are stereotypical in how they are always female - but that makes me feel like I’m trying to be pretentious because in my mind it’s pretty much all a result of someone watching a horror movie with friends and it gets to a scene where a babysitter is getting stabbed and they just go “but what if that was some buff wrestler guy” and everyone immediately agreed that could be a really fun idea.
Child in danger from a creepy stranger.
It’s a fun flick. I think there’s a wide enough range of folks that can enjoy this for what it is - I mean, it’s also not the only movie that flipped around the script when it came to babysitter murder movies, and some of those alternatives did really well so there must be a market for it. It’s pretty fun throughout, knowing that at least part of its power comes from this absurd power dynamic but also trying not to go so wild with it that it’s the Macho Man literally demolishing every piece of furniture in the house by ramming a would be slasher through it. Of course, it’s also not so uptight about messaging that it hinders itself from cracking jokes, so it slides right on by and keeps one entertained. I’d say if you don’t mind a little (or a lot) of blood in a sort of whimsical but serious setting, it’d be worth checking out - especially if it was on a free service or on the telly while you were hanging out.