Blood Star

In British filmmaker Lawrence Jacomelli’s debut Blood Star, after a strong cold open to set us up nicely, we meet Bobbi (Camacho), currently putting mile after mile behind her cruising along the New Mexico black-top, driving her way back home to her abusive boyfriend, despite her sister’s desperate pleas over the phone to see sense. But Bobbi is undeterred and carries on, stopping briefly only to fill up the car where she encounters, for the first but certainly not the last time, Sherriff Bilstein (Schwab).

 

And that first gas station encounter is when Jacomelli begins to tighten the vice on his audience, as slowly but surely Bobbi’s initial run in with the law escalates into a full-on fight for survival as the sheriff proceeds to relentlessly pursue and terrorize poor Bobbi across the state.

 

In its first hour, Blood Star is this incredibly tense, dramatic, engaging and damn entertaining cat-and-mouse thriller that hardly puts a foot wrong. Exploring a number of themes such as violent misogyny and abuse of authoritative power, Blood Star blends a lot of good ideas with interesting characters and great visuals. Special kudos to cinematographer Pascal Combes-Knoke, the desert setting vistas in particular utilized to the fullest in capturing Bobbi’s complete isolation and helplessness as Bilstein’s maniacal and sadistic power trip refuses to let up.

 

Strong leads are key here as well, and while Bobbi isn’t exactly the most likeable protagonist, not having your typical clean-cut victim in the driver’s seat as it were, adds a different layer to the film that gives Bobbi more authenticity, and Camacho does a stellar job in showing great depth not just in Bobbi’s moments of vulnerability but also of defiant strength and resilience. A hard-to-like heroine may be a bone of contention for some, but because Schwab’s terrifying Sheriff Bilstein is almost always the epitome of an unsettling calm, control and cold, calculated psychopath, Bobbi can afford to be imperfect and still has us very much rooting for her against Schwab’s perfectly measured and highly unsettling villain with a badge and a gun.

 

However, where the film loses its way is right around that hour mark, where certain creative choices on how far to push the violence and gore undercut a lot of what the film is trying to talk about and the great, hard work that makes the previous sixty minutes so enjoyable. Sheriff Bilstein’s motivations and reasonings lack originality and the subsequent gruesome and uncomfortable scenes that follow take the film to a place it didn’t need to go and struggles to come back from, which is a real shame because the first hour shows that the film can be and is so much smarter than that.

 

Blood Star is a very smart, very well put together film that due to certain choices starts to trip over itself up towards the end. Despite that, it still manages to make it home and provide quite the entertaining thrill ride along the way.

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