CinemaSerf
January 22, 2025
5
Fresh from his success as tea-time totty "Robin Hood" for the BBC, Jonas Armstrong takes on something altogether more sinister here in this low brow adaptation of Clive Barker's "Book of Blood" stories. He is "Simon" who becomes the fascination of writer "Mary" (Sophie Ward) who works with her electronics expert buddy to track down the paranormal. Of course the vast majority of her cases end up fakes, but she senses something legit about her new pal and when they all find themselves in a really creepy Edinburgh house, she thinks that just perhaps they are slap bang in the middle of a super spooky highway where souls commute from here to there! Thing is, is he the real deal or is it all smoke and mirrors? He's not a shy man and is semi-naked for much of this film; Ward isn't far behind and those increasingly smouldering elements of sexual chemistry are heavily relied upon by director John Harrison to keep us awake. Otherwise, this is a singularly dull ghost story that really plods glacially along until the last fifteen minutes when we finally get some sort of action. To be fair to Armstrong, he has committed much to the part and for a lot of it his body looks like it's in considerable pain covered, as it is, in inscriptions that look like they've been carved straight onto his skin using a school compass. Some stories are just best read and left to our imagination, and these Barker stories are probably those. It'll probably do in a cinema at Halloween if you've had a few beers, but otherwise is all just a showcase for two handsome people who don't mind getting their kit off. Lord only knows how they managed to spend £5 millions on the production.
This is nowhere near as good or as though-out as the 2020-version. This narrative-within-a-narrative is not a draw, the story meanders at times and then tries to rush tension. The characters are not really compelling, and thus the tension is missing. The casting is decent and the direction is good, but that's not enough to live up to the later version, which showed how to utilize this potential better.
