THE BLOODHOUND (2021) – What a load of rubbish!

This arthouse movie wanna be is bad. It is bad because of so many reasons I don’t even know where to begin. Despite being inspired by a Edgar Allen Poe short story titled “The Fall of the House of Usher”, which is one of his most popular stories, The Bloodhound manages to make the story incoherent and purposeless. The overall acting by its modest scale cast is amateurish. It’s two main characters played by unknowns Liam Aiken and Joe Adler, not only cannot act but were made to deliver a script that is pretentious, making them look even more inferior and annoying. Not the sort of people you would want to spend an evening with. For a basically two persons story to work , it must have a very interesting script and top notched actors to deliver this. Here, The Bloodhound fails poorly, and comes off looking like a college movie club project.

To be fair, I would put the blame mainly on its writer / director Patrick Picard. Afterall he was responsible for the bad script as well as making the movie look and feel so bad. The way the characters are made to converse just doesn’t come across as being normal and how real people and conversations would take place. Then again, I could be wrong, as there are indications that some characters in the story may be experiencing some level of depression, loneliness and mental illness.

Despite its merciful short running of only 72 minutes, the film felt it was never going to end. The Bloodhound is also misleadingly classified as being under the horror genre, because there is nothing horrifying about it apart from how horribly bad it is. It’s title Bloodhound is also a mystery. It suggested perhaps a tale about werewolf but that anticipation is soon dispelled when I realise it was based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe and that there was no werewolves of any monsters in the tale. The appearance of a mysterious person (presumably the Bloodhound of the title) who literally crawled out of the river or lake, and slides his way about in the house while hiding inside a closet is not explained and we have to figure this out ourselves. Some movie critics actually found merits in The Bloodhound and understand it!! They could actually conclude that the Bloodhound represents some sort of metaphor for representing the spirit of the house which is giving out bad vibes to its occupants, hence, only imaginary and not physically menacing.

Anyway for me this is bad news and I need to take note of the name Patrick Picard to avoid his films in future.