Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Daniel Turres
Written by James Roberts
Here for Blood mixes wrestling suplexes and a murderous KISS-like death cult with a babysitting plot. Surprisingly, the movie pulls it off. The movie’s action pounds through the plot with splattery glee and aplomb. Moreover, the unlikely partnership between hulking Shawn Roberts and 10-year-old Maya Misaljevic is pure magic.
This movie feels like Adventures in Babysitting by way of Evil Dead 2, after making a side-mission to The Warriors and filled with steroids. Simply put, this is bloody bonkers fun. You must set aside logical notions and bathe in the terrific cast chemistry and the splattertastic practical gore effects.
Shawn Roberts, probably best known for his one-note bad guy Albert Wesker in the Resident Evil franchise, gets to turn on his natural charm for this film. He has a warmness to his physicality in this role that suits the movie’s tone. If you’re going to play a professional wrestler who takes on babysitting in a side gig, you will need to be likable… and he is.
The Cast:
- Shawn Roberts plays small-time professional wrestler Tom O’Bannon. Broken promises and shady promoters have put him in desperation mode.
- Maya Misaljevic plays Grace, your prototype sweet little kid. She’s tougher than she looks.
- Joelle Farrow plays Phoebe, a college student who has been babysitting Grace for a while but is under pressure to do well in finals. She is Tom’s girlfriend.
- Tara Spencer-Nairn plays Barb, Grace’s mom.
- Michael Therriault plays Gill, Grace’s stepdad. Grace doesn’t trust Gill and thinks he’s a strange dude.
- Samantha Helt and Kelly Penner play Christine and Mike, Phoebe’s best friends from college.
A Short Summary of Here for Blood
Phoebe is stressing out about her college final exams and realizes that the babysitting appointment she has agreed to will interfere with her studies. Despite Christine and Mike’s doubts, Phoebe determines that her boyfriend, Tom, can take on her babysitting duties. Her friends consider Tom unsuitable for babysitting, as he makes his living inside the ring and as a show wrestler.
Tom, despite giving a tremendous show in front of a very modest crowd, is only given $20 for his efforts in his most recent match. When Phoebe asks him to help, he is initially reluctant, but he hard up for cash so he can’t refuse. Little do they know, but there is a masked killer on the loose nearby, killing pretty young women. So, perhaps it’s good that Tom is taking a babysitting shift.
When he arrives at the farmhouse to take care of Grace, he meets the parents, who have agreed to let Tom substitute for Phoebe for the night. They are startled by Tom’s hulking presence, but it’s a date night, so they give Tom pizza money and head out. Grace is busy with video games and is nonplussed with Tom’s arrival, but the pair get along well enough. This should be easy money… until a cadre of masked cultists murder the pizza guy and sneak into the attic to get Grace.
Tom eventually figures out that there’s something wrong and uses his wrestling moves to dispatch the intruders, but there are many of them, and a demonic presence powers them. Tom is going to have his hands full, and Phoebe is on her way after finishing her studies. Though bloodied, Tom is determined to protect Grace and Phoebe from what he believes are sex perverts, but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Evaluation
Shawn Roberts finally got his big break. He’s been in movies since he was a kid in Goosebumps, but this is his first top-of-the-callsheet and front-of-the-poster movie. Why it took this long to get a leading man gig is perplexing. He has great charisma and comic timing, along with a ripped physique. The movie announces itself as a ’90s throwback film, and perhaps Roberts is a throwback actor. Superhero films have replaced the age of the classic ’90s action hero, and though he has had minor roles in some superhero productions (X-Men, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow), he hasn’t gotten a big break. In a way, this feels like an audition for a Deadpool-like bloody action picture. James Gunn, are you watching?
Maya Misaljevic was essential in elevating this film from a cliche affair into a ripping romp. Her timing and chemistry with Roberts were on point. Though her role fits the classic cute kid trope, there was no cloying overacting or stiffness that so often dooms cute kid tropes.
I can’t say the same about the relationship between Phoebe and Tom, though. There is a big age gap between the actors, probably 15-20 years. It doesn’t seem like a college student would be dating a nearly 40-year-old wrestler. But, for the plot to play out, that’s how you do it. The bond is plot-connected but not performance-connected. Love? Who needs love!?
But, you don’t watch a movie like this for the inter-personal dialogue. You come for bloody mayhem, and this movie delivers big time with the bloodshed. Here for the Blood, indeed. The practical effects spew copious amounts of blood. The cultists are a motley bunch with fun masks, though they are essentially cannon fodder, with progressive difficulty levels for Tom to fight. And you get a talking decaying head with the voice of Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider. Call that a win, and finish off the popcorn!
Conclusion:
I found this film to be more creative and less predictable than the similar but much bigger budgeted Abigail. That’s a decent comp. If Kindergarten Cop was a horror film, that would also be a reasonable comp. Shawn Roberts is having a blast in this film, and he should! It plays to all his strengths. He winks and smirks with perfect deadpan timing. He conveys earnestness, bravado, and insight without ever seeming like the plot has made him more clever than he should be. The movie is more action entertainment than terrifying, as Tom is more imposing than the cultists. The power imbalance between the villains and the protagonist is inverted from a typical horror movie.
Daniel Turres is a heretofore unknown commodity. I stated previously that this felt like an audition for Roberts to get a bigger gig, and the same holds for Turres. He knows the timing of a retro slasher comedy and edited the movie to an optimal twitch. He could be an emerging director to keep an eye on. I would certainly watch a sequel if they get the band back together.
This is an under-the-radar film, for sure. It was late to the streaming world, having been released in 2022, but reached streaming last year on Amazon. I wasn’t aware of the film until one of my colleagues, Heather, put it on her Top 10 Horror Films of 2024 list. Thanks, Heather! Here For Blood is unrated, but it is chock full of violence, gore, and evil activities. Though it is streaming on Amazon, your better bet would be to watch this for free on Tubi.