Blood Trail DVD Review:

Many people will try and argue that the western is a dead genre. If this is not true, films like Blood Trail are certainly making it easier to see that it is near death, and make the truest fans want to put it out of its misery. It isn’t that Blood Trail is a horrible film. In fact, with more funding, better dialogue, and a slightly better cast it could have been really good. The sad fact however, is that a western is hard pressed to find these necessary items anymore, and instead must resort to allowing itself to be marketed as a horror movie as Blood Trail was.

A path of destruction is rapidly going through the area of a sacred Indian burial ground, killing countless people, not all guilty of any injustice. Thinking that it must be an Indian, a group of men set out to find and kill the murderer. They find themselves hunting something that they can’t compete with, however, tracking closer and closer to death.

Much of Blood Trail is told in a straightforward way, even allowing the killings to be subtle and real. It takes the time to allow some authenticity in the surroundings as well, so that it never really feels like watching a group of men playing cowboys and Indians. Sadly though, there is little else redeeming about the film. Characters are developed, but in an untraditional way so that it is difficult to know who is the leader of the film, or the men hunting. By the end of the film this is made clear only by the men remaining alive. Also, although the dialogue is realistic, much of it seems more like random chatter that would fit more in The Blair Witch Project than a film with an actual script.

Although Deadwood and other odd westerns here and there seem to breathe life back into the genre, it seems that it would be better left to them rather than small budget projects such as Blood Trail, which is merely proving a point. The DVD comes in letterbox format and has a few trailers, but is otherwise as sparse as the horse it rode in on.



Ryan Izay