Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		2.5

Wicked Blood Blu-ray Movie Review

Breaking mediocre.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 29, 2014

Well wrought metaphors can be sinuous, almost subliminal, experiences which suddenly erupt into consciousness with seemingly fully formed connections between what were previously thought of as disparate elements. Even well wrought metaphors can become heavy handed, though, especially when overused or made to be so overt that any connective surprise is mitigated. That’s one of the chief problems with Wicked Blood, a film that plays like a bizarre genre mash up of Breaking Bad: The Complete Series and Winter's Bone. Like the saga of Walter White, we get a tale of a basically decent person swept up into the drug trade, and like the film that helped establish Jennifer Lawrence as a major new star, we get a yarn of some Southern Fried folks whom you probably wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley (or even a well lit one). But Wicked Blood, the brainchild of Mark Young, who both wrote and directed it, comes out swinging with a chess metaphor that, while interesting enough, is overplayed to the point that many viewers will simply be saying, “Fine, checkmate”, after its fourth or fifth use. Wicked Blood details the story of young Louisiana girl Hannah (Abigail Breslin), a chess prodigy who is reeling from the recent death of her father. Saddled at home with an unsympathetic older sister named Amber (Alexa Pena-Vega) and drug addled uncle named Donny (Lew Temple), Hannah keeps to herself—and her chess board. Donny drowns his sorrows in what he calls “hillbilly crack”, but he was once an aspiring chess champion himself, and regularly attempts to engage Hannah in games. Amber can’t stand Donny and his drug problem, but it’s Hannah who takes things into her own hands when Federal agents show up at the family home one day and tell her that she’ll be shipped off to foster care if she doesn’t divulge where Donny is hiding out.

Up to this point (which is admittedly pretty early in the film), Wicked Blood rather nicely depicts the fetid living conditions of Hannah and her kin, as well as establishing the tenuous but loving bond between Hannah and Donny, as well as the incipient sibling rivalry between Hannah and Amber. But in a bizarre if perhaps laudable defiance of convention, Hannah decides to avoid being sent into foster care by working for her other uncle, Frank (Sean Bean), a more nefarious character who just happens to be the local mob boss and one of the area’s prime drug kingpins. Hannah’s motives here are half baked at best, with a perhaps implied desire to get enough cash to get the hell out of Dodge on her own and invent herself in some new locale.

Meanwhile Amber, who works in a dead end job as a diner waitress, meets a biker gang guy with the improbable name of Wild Bill (James Purefoy), and the two begin an awkward romance despite their age difference. In one of those cross connections that only seem to ever happen in turgid melodramas like this, Bill turns out to have drug connections of his own, and when Hannah goes to work for Frank, she discovers them.

Wicked Blood proceeds pretty much as expected, with a bunch of back stabbing, violence against women (and, ultimately, men), and a kind of Southern Gothic feel that is like William Faulkner on Quaaludes (interestingly, Young helmed a film named Southern Gothic a few years ago). It all could have worked, but Young’s insistence on the chess metaphor—a gambit which recurs way too frequently and is further exacerbated by Breslin’s incessant voice overs discussing strategies—just becomes too precious for an otherwise gritty film. Young’s conceit is obvious from the get go—Hannah is a whiz, a formidable adversary who shouldn’t be underestimated, and she obviously has the smarts to be thinking at least several moves ahead, which gives her a significant advantage in what turns out to be a life or death situation.

For such a lo-fi effort, Young at least has attracted a rather starry list of performers, and they all do rather surprisingly good work. Breslin may not have quite the understated gravitas that Lawrence did in Winter’s Bone, but she segues through Hannah’s changes rather well. Pena-Vega is quite winning as Amber, nicely detailing her initial dislike of Hannah which is forced to morph into an alliance. Her scenes with Purefoy are also weirdly awkward, which is probably perfect for the characters they’re portraying. Bean is quite menacing as the evil mastermind Frank, and Jake Busey is similarly memorable as a henchman. The supporting honors probably go to Temple as Donny, a character who is both repulsive (there are some rather graphic scenes of him shooting up and reacting to the drug infusion) and strangely lovable (he is initially Hannah’s most empathetic family member).

Directorially, Young obviously has a lot of talent but he’s also at that self-consciously arty stage that tends to draw attention to itself too much. Therefore, there are lots of mannered framings that give us things like fisheyed views of Chevy grilles, or an overturned bike wheel spinning aimlessly in the foreground as a dilapidated mobile home appears back yonder. Young is to be commended for having gotten good performances out of a nice cast, but it’s all in service of a fairly pedestrian story.

Wicked Blood Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Wicked Blood is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Entertainment One with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. This digitally shot feature makes a virtually flawless transition to Blu-ray, with a sharp and well defined image that has a somewhat subdued palette but which offers impeccable clarity and, in some of the outdoor shots of the countryside which Young employs quite often, fantastic depth of field. Close-ups reveal exceptional fine detail. Contrast seems to have intentionally been dialed up quite a bit of the time, leading to slight blooming in the lighter color gradients, something that also leads to a marginal loss of detail and clarity at times. Despite the film's reliance on dimly lit interior scenes, noise and other artifacts are never a problem.

Wicked Blood Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Wicked Blood's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 has consistent surround activity, but it's just a bit anemic at times, something that's a bit unexpected given effects like the massive explosion that starts the film (which turns out to be the ending of the story). That said, the film's dialogue is very cleanly and clearly presented, and midlevel low frequency effects like the roar of motorcycles sound very good. The film's rootsy score also sounds great.

Wicked Blood Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interviews (1080p; 12:01) include Abigail Breslin, Sean Bean, James Purefoy, and Alexa Vega.


• Trailer (1080p; 2:07)

Wicked Blood Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Wicked Blood is too predictable for its own good, something that is further exacerbated by Young's arty direction (which only serves to point out how pedestrian the actual story is) and the ultimately ridiculous reliance on the chess analogy. Still, there are some good performances here, especially by Temple, who makes Donny the film's most memorable character. Fans of any of the actors may well want to check this out, for despite its flaws the technical merits of the Blu-ray are quite excellent.