Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

The Blood Lands Blu-ray Movie Review

Brought to You by VisitScotland.org

Reviewed by Michael Reuben September 2, 2015

Early in the English thriller, The Blood Lands, a realtor showing a rundown farmhouse in the Scottish countryside notes that it stands on the site of a "ferocious" battle between the Scots and the English. Asked who won, she answers with a smile: "That depends on who you talk to." A similar degree of wry ambiguity was clearly what screenwriter Ian Fenton and director Simeon Halligan were after from the film. Fenton originally envisioned the story from two points of view, shifting between the farmhouse's inhabitants barricaded inside and their attackers laying siege from outside, but he ultimately settled on an approach that stayed entirely with the inhabitants and left the attackers' identities vague. Director Halligan looked for visual inspiration to films like the 2008 shocker, The Strangers, which employed a similar approach.

Unfortunately, despite good performances and a capable crew, The Blood Lands doesn't achieve the creepiness factor for which its writer and director were aiming. The marauders are frightening enough, once they finally show up, but the victims make themselves such easy targets that they quickly lose the audience's sympathy. People in real life often behave stupidly, but in movies they have to be at least smart enough to prevent the audience from thinking to themselves (or yelling at the screen): "Oh come on!"

A London married couple, Sarah (Pollyanna McIntosh, Let Us Prey) and Ed Chapman (Lee Williams, No Night Is Too Long), decide to start a new life in Scotland, where their "city money" allows them to afford an acre and a half with a huge but dilapidated farmhouse and several outlying buildings. The chipper but evasive estate agent, Flo (Joanne Mitchell), informs them that the property belonged to the same family for several generations, but the last owner lost it to a bank. The cost may seem low for city folk, but none of the other bids have come anywhere near the asking price. Ed is concerned at the extent of the work that the property will require, but Sarah sees a chance to change their lives and pushes him to say yes. Three months later, the couple are moving in with all their worldly possessions.

For two people who have had ample time to plan, however, Sarah and Ed seem less than prepared. When Sarah inadvertently shorts out the fuses, they have surprisingly little in the way of flashlights. They also display a shocking lack of familiarity with nature, as if they didn't expect it to be there in the countryside where they were moving for the rest of their lives. After admiring the daytime vistas and making love in the open air, the couple are unsettled by the sounds of nighttime wildlife and the creaks and rattles that are only to be expected from an old house. Sarah is convinced there's someone outside, even though the only person they've seen since arriving is a kid who rode by on a bicycle.

But then, of course, real invaders do arrive: masked men with bright flashlights, who declare their presence without any ambiguity. An opening teaser hints at the conclusion (or part of it), but the latter half of The Blood Lands is devoted to Sarah's and Ed's efforts to escape their attackers, whose motive is never stated. Director Halligan engineers a few tense moments, but far too many near misses are obviously arranged to keep the story from coming to a premature end. (How can you not find the keys that were there just a minute ago? How can you be smart enough to hit this guy repeatedly but not that one?) The film's curiously unresolved conclusion was no doubt intended to leave the audience gasping with surprise, which only works if viewers are wound up to the breaking point with suspense. By that point, though, despite heroic efforts from McIntosh and Williams, most viewers probably won't care.

The Blood Lands Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Blood Lands was the first feature shot by James Swift, an experienced camera operator for British television. Post-production was completed on a digital intermediate, from which Magnolia Home Video's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced by a direct digital path. Both in its photographic style and its color palette, the image aims for naturalism, so that it can adequately represent the beauty of Scottish scenery, at one extreme, and the menace of the nighttime attackers and their hulking figures, at the other. The forests surrounding the farmhouse can look green and inviting in daylight and bluish black and hazardous at night. Blacks are solid, and shades of black are nicely differentiated, which is essential for extended scenes of cat-and-mouse in the buildings and surrounding woods. Wherever there is light, detail is excellent. The decrepitude of the farmhouse is so evident that you will be wondering why anyone would want to buy it.

Magnolia has mastered The Blood Lands with an average bitrate of 24.01, and the compression has been carefully performed.

The Blood Lands Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Blood Lands's 5.1 sound mix, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, effectively recreates the cacophony that so unnerves Sarah and Ed (but especially Sarah) as they settle in for their first night in their new home, with plenty of cries, creaks, rattles and other unidentifiable noises all around. Later, when the threat is all too real, the voices of their attackers can be heard in distant pursuit. Stereo separations are distinct across the front soundstage, so that people speaking off-camera are heard to left or right, and the dialogue is always clear. The score was composed by Jon Wygert, a frequent composer for documentaries, who has created a range of moods, from suspense tone reminiscent of Jon Carpenter to echoes of folk ballads.

The Blood Lands Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• The Making of The Blood Lands (1080p; 1.78:1; 16:21): This overview of the film's development and production contains interviews with the director, writer, producers and crew, as well as leads McIntosh and Williams and several of the actors playing the masked attackers, whose jolly manner belies their threatening demeanor on camera.



• Also from Magnolia Home Entertainment: The disc includes trailers for The Skin Trade, The Dead Lands and Kill Me Three Times, as well as promos for the Chideo web service and AXS TV. These also play at startup, where they can be skipped with the chapter forward button.



• BD-Live: As of this writing, attempting to access BD-Live gave the message "Check back for updates".

The Blood Lands Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When my colleague Jeffrey Kauffman reviewed Simeon Halligan's first feature, Splintered, he hoped that the former production designer would choose a better script for his sophomore effort. With all due respect to screenwriter Fenton, The Blood Lands was not that script. The concept of natives attacking English interlopers is promising, especially in today's context of controversy over Scottish independence (which was used to promote the film in the U.K.), but the plot mechanics needed to be worked out with much greater care to create a credibly frightening scenario. Rent, or see on demand (if at all).