If you are into Horror movies, you obviously know who Clive Barker is.  He is the genius behind some great horror flicks like “Hellraiser,” “Nightbreed,” and of course…”Candyman.”  I can’t say I am a fan of all his work, because he has had some stinkers over the years, but usually if I see Clive associated with a film; I will genuinely be excited.

Last night I watched “Book of Blood” which was adapted from one of Clive Barker’s short stories.  The movie is pretty much a haunted house / ghost story with a slightly different take (as they all do).  The good thing is this film had a very retro feel to it…to me at least.  I felt like the color, cinematography and atmosphere was very seventies.  I felt that it was very similar looking to the Exorcist with the lighting and camerawork which I liked.

The story was interesting, nothing groundbreaking or overly complex, but it still worked.  When you are making a movie about a haunting, let’s be honest, we have pretty much seen it all.  There is a lot of suspense throughout the movie and quite a bit of doom as an overlying theme.  The movie is dark and somewhat dated which also propels the suspense and dread within the film.

As far as the characters go, there are really only three characters we ever see.  The good thing about that is we actually get to know the characters and form somewhat of a bond with them, if only for a short period of time until they change our perception and ideas of how they think and act.  There are some drastic character changes that take place about three quarters of the way through which some may find off-putting, but I thought it was pretty clever.

At the point where the characters change, we hit a somewhat rough spot in the screenplay.  At one point, I believe the director wants us to throw everything we “think” we know out the window and start over again, but then brings us right back to where we left off only ten minutes away.  It is sort of weird and that is probably the biggest problem I have with this movie.  I think a re-write in that small portion of the film would have catapulted this from a good movie to a great movie.  There are also a few scenes which I really don’t get at all.  There are only really three deaths in this film and I don’t get two of them.  The two deaths don’t add up to the finale; maybe the director just felt we needed to see more blood and murder…it was unneeded. 

Other than those few holes, I really had a good time watching this movie.  There were some great special effects going on such as an invisible hand over the mouth of the lead actress.  Seriously, it was very cool to actually see a hand over the mouth of someone and believe it by seeing the indented shapes of fingers holding a mouth closed.  Also a lot of cool apparitions and ghosts were very well done.

There were not a lot of kill scenes at all, but the mood made up for it.  When watching the movie, there was an unbelievable sense of doom and dread which is far creepier than seeing gore and killing. 

Overall, I would say this movie was a good watch, certainly not as good as “Hellraiser” or “Candyman,” but good enough to add to my personal DVD collection.