The Blood Harvest (2016) User Reviews

I knew it.

[nogodnomasters · 4/10 · 12 December 2018]

Jack (Robert Render) gets fired from investigating a string of unusual homicides that involve blood draining. The killings are all similar....vampires he thinks. The rest of the film consists of people being abducted and ritualistically killed while Jack looks for them.

The film had a good premise, it was just poorly scripted and executed.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

Bloody goings on in Northern Ireland in this Indie gore fest

[t-dooley-69-386916 · 5/10 · 8 March 2016]

Detective Chaplin is working homicide in Belfast when a spate of gruesome killings start to be uncovered. The cops are baffled but Detective Chaplin (Robert Render) has a theory – and it is that they are dealing with some supernatural force – maybe vampires. Needless to say his boss's think he is talking a crock of do dos and he gets fired.

The plot moves on and the corpses are still piling up – but Chaplin is still in contact wit his old partner and they are secretly working on the case. Will they find the killer, is there more than one killer and are we really dealing with the super natural? Only one way to find out and that is to go after the bad guys or guy or blood suckers etc.

Now this has been made on a budget that would buy a second hand mini – with high mileage- so I always allow a bit for that. The acting is all pretty good to be honest. The camera work was a bit too close up in a number of scenes, but the gore and special effects are all pretty well done. The script was for me where it sort of unravels a bit with a twist that many will find as convincing as 'the dog's best friend ate my homework'. That though is an artistic choice and to be fair I did not see it coming. So a pretty good effort all round – clearly made for the love of it – hence my rating.

An abomination of a movie.

[Stevieboy666 · 1/10 · 21 May 2019]

Set in Northern Ireland a dismissed cop investigates a series of bloody, brutal murders, convinced that vampires may be at work. I was suckered into buying this rubbish by the DVD's enticing cover and budget price, but what a waste of money and 86 minutes of my life it proved to be. Yes it is very low budget, so that has to be taken into account, but a turd is a turd. For a start it looked like it had been filmed using a mobile 'phone camera. The acting is hideously bad, two of the main characters have accents that are all over the place. The script is equally bad, as is the continuity, at times it felt like an unintentional comedy. There is a fair amount of gore but it is very cheap looking. A twist caught me out towards the end but it is badly done and by this time I just wanted it to end. Terrible, terrible. Give this Harvest a miss!

Indie Rubbish

[saint_brett · 1/10 · 2 November 2021]

Movie starts out of left field as some random slag is putting trash out then next minute Captain Howdy sews her lips shut and she's tortured by the deejay from Slipknot. Did it make any sense? No, but it's our lead into the movie.

Is that Patrick Stewart?

Pavarotti makes a drab 5-minute phone call about nothing. Movie jumps 9 months later and two dirtbags are being chased by Sid in an old castle sewage system and senselessly murdered.

Ginger Spice goes for a run and encounters Mikadroid, who looks like it's wearing vacuum parts on its head. Driving Stallone's Monterey from Cobra, Mikadroid cruises around Romania trying not to draw any attention to the stupid life support costume it's sporting.

Meanwhile Pavarotti's been sitting for 9 months staring at a chart and wearing the same clothes.

26-minutes in, and still not making any sense, Weapon Head Mikadroid de-pants some young lad and cuts ties with his achilles tendon. Then the movie cuts back to Pavarotti obsessing over his chart again.

Out of boredom Pavarotti goes for a drive in the Baltics and laces some vodka with holy water and garlic in the belief that Mikadroid is an electric vampire who runs on unholy hoover parts, or something?

Mikadroid and Sid make a major movie sin by removing their masks, revealing that they're just uneducated humans underneath. Keep the masks on, fella's. That goes to everybody.

Returning from Chechnya, Pavarotti consults the chart again, frustrated that he can't find any cheat codes for the Black Friday spare parts sale, which holds the key in bringing down Hoover Head and Sid.

But he persists and finally cracks the code with a GPS warp cheat and drives around the Isle of Man and pinpoints Mikadroid and Sid who are terrorising Ginger Spice in the cathedral's underground maze still.

Mikadroid offs Sid for some reason as Pavarotti closes in.

In a stupid twist Patrick Stewart is one of Mikadroid's henchmen. They bound Pavarotti and reveal that they're not human but aliens.

Jimmy Somerville comes to the aid of Pavarotti and they all duke it out with their fists, or whatever is at hand.

Just watch the far superior Scottish movie "Sawney."

Spoilers follow ...

[parry_na · 6/10 · 13 October 2016]

This micro-budget independent film opens with the grisly murder of a young lady, involving the removal of one of her eyes, sewing up of the mouth and the slashing of the tendons. The miscreant is one of two brothers who spend much of the running time committing similar atrocities, while wearing a variety of masks – a skull-fashioned motorcycle helmet and an elaborate welding/gas mask.

Jack Chaplin (Robert Render) continues to investigate the case despite being officially sacked from the force, aided by the sometimes incomprehensible Detective Hatcher (Dutch actor Jean-Paul Van Der Velde). The macho, New York style of tough-talking dialogue would be difficult for anyone to perform, and often sounds very unconvincing from this cast.

The masks are removed earlier than is the norm for such reveals, and the acting from the two mentally deficient young miscreants is the best seen throughout the run (the two feral brothers eventually fall out over a pretty blond. This leads to one killing the other), although they appear too well groomed to be the outcasts they are supposed to be - in fact, the police are more dishevelled. The end reveal may or may not have an explanation for that … The reason for the killings is finally explained in a heavy stream of dialogue that reveals a twist so utterly bizarre, it is likely that no-one will expect it. Many will be unable to take it seriously, but it might explain some of the stilted line delivery of Hatcher. These scenes are classic examples of the villains taking time to explain the plot to the hero moments before the game is up. In-keeping with the difficult-to-stomach style of the film, and the mind-blowing revelation about Hatcher (which I won't reveal), his being carted off to face justice is … going to be difficult to carry out.

'The Blood Harvest' is a strange mix of styles, a far from obvious way of telling a slasher story. Director, producer and writer George Clarke makes incredibly good use of the £10, 000 budget, his mix of close-ups and shaking camera movements creating a sense of pace, even when the plot simply lines up one victim after another. This is a refreshing way of presenting horror and that alone makes up for the film's short-comings.