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Blood and Snow
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Cleopatra Entertainment Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (28th July 2024). |
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The Film
 Returning from a supply run to Biocorp Corporation's arctic drilling base, soft-spoken botanist Sebastian (The Lesson's Michael Swatton ) and misogynistic hauler Luke (Gehenna: Where Death Lives' Simon Phillips) come across Marie (Butchers' Anne-Carolyne Binette) one of a duo of French scientists given urgent assistance by Biocorp to trace a vein of oil catatonic and covered in blood standing in the freezing snow. While Sebastian tries to communicate with Marie, Luke follows the trail of blood to a drilling site where he also finds the headless corpse of her colleague Marcus (Stιphane Tremblay). Returning to base, Sebastian and Luke are immediately at odds with one another and with the lackadaisical captain Paul (Fortress: Sniper's Eye's Adam Huel Potter) and the protocol-oriented tech guy Will (What Lurks Beneath's Blake Canning). Luke believes that Marie must have gone crazy and murdered her boss while Sebastian believes some animal wild animal must have attacked them. Although video from the camcorder Luke discovered at the scene that he swears shows Marie killing Marcus has vanished, he still insists that something was up with the pair since he reveals that they actually paid him to break protocol and go out into the surrounding wild without an escort. When Marie wakes speaking inexplicable perfect English and referring to herself in the third person as "the first of many," base medic "The Professor" (Commando's Vernon Wells) at first believes it is classic disassociation from a trauma until he discovers a high level of radiation in her system and that of the headless remains of Marcus retrieved in the night by Sebastian. As Marie with increased strength and cunning starts disabling the base life support systems, the survivors come to believe that what is inside her wants rescue to come in order for it to spread to more of them. The feature debut of Jesse Palangio who started out as a cinematographer he also lensed this film and moved on to directing horror-oriented shorts for festival play and the kind of anthology films glutting streaming services today, Blood and Snow looks slick but its overall indebtedness to John Carpenter's The Thing (more so than the source story "Who Goes There?" or the Howard Hawks film) is at first just painful and soon becomes infuriating as it further incorporates bits from Alien into a one-hundred-and-fifteen-minute slog. While it is indeed possible that some of the actors were directed to give affect-less performances or to deadpan their delivery, neither they nor those going over the top like the seasoned Wells can overcome some of the dumbest dialogue said with a straight face like "Oil waits for no man" or "Because when you're hunting with one bullet, you gotta wait for a clean shot!" (not unlike Neil Marshall's treatment of his recent attempted Dog Soldiers-esque throwback The Lair). Everyone tries, but they are fighting a losing battle against a script and some deadly pacing exacerbated by parsing in the backstory as flashbacks including important points and some Annihilation-esque dreary mournful reflection on the developing attraction between Sebastian and Marie when the film might have played better not only with tighter editing but getting the backstory out of the way at the start by creating mystery with the closed-mouth nature of the "urgent" drilling operation. Other extraneous bits involving the camp's sassy black guy (Prosper Junior), the old-timer janitor (The Ice Road Killer's Paul Whitney), as well as an emotional video message from The Professor's daughter (The Dunes' Brooke Chamberlain) and Paul sneaking away to video conference with his wife (Brianna Ripley) seem designed less to drag the running time even further but to create roles for actors who have appeared with some of the main cast in other Canadian-lensed horror films before and after this. Even the "surprise" ending's callback to the Carpenter film's opening is a groaner. Practical effects are minimal but well-executed CGI blood spatter is also restrained but the digital depiction of a blizzard over some nice aerial or drone shots of the wintry location looks to have been layered in before some additional foreground elements were added. Blood and Snow is watchable but it might have been bearable had it either acknowledged it debt and tried to do something more with the same ideas or had it just been better-paced. 
Video
Cleopatra Entertainment's Blu-ray edition of Blood and Snow is pretty much otherwise representative of their presentations. The movie is encoded in 1080p24 MPEG-2 2.40:1 widescreen, but the clean HD lensing - blacks are often lighter than the widescreen matting but that appears to be down to the grading since adjusting the contrast throws off the other colder grays and blues - do not strain the older codec any more than some added moving grain even on a single-layer disc. 
Audio
Either to save space or money on licensing, the 5.1 track has been encoded in lossy Dolby Digital while the stereo track is uncompressed LPCM 2.0 also common to Cleopatra's releases but either one gets the job done since the mix is not demonstration material. Scoring has some depth and there are a few rear channel effects apart from the distant weather sounds. Dialogue is always clear and audible and optional English SDH subtitles are also provided. 
Extras
As with other Cleopatra releases, extras are dependent on what the film's producers provide; so here we only get a slideshow (2:46) and a trailer (1:38) although we should perhaps be thankful for no EPK material where the filmmakers or the cast try to convince us of the presence of psychological aspects or deeper themes that are not there. 
Overall
Blood and Snow is watchable but it might have been bearable had it either acknowledged it debt and tried to do something more with the same ideas or had it just been better-paced.
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