Kicking Blood: A Vampire Love Story – review

Director: Blaine Thurier

Release date: 2021

Contains spoilers

The drawing of a comparison between vampirism and chemical addiction is not a new idea, nor is the idea of a vampire trying to kick the blood habit. However, that doesn’t matter as the vampire genre builds upon the foundations of what has gone before and always has.

What we have with Kicking Blood is a very visually stylish film, defying what I assume were tight budgetary constraints, which eschews horror for character drama but is that enough?

in the glow of candles

It starts with a portrait shot of lead character Anna (Alanna Bale), her face illuminated by candlelight. The candle, a birthday one, comes in shot, is blown out and then we see her in artificial light. It is a celebration of her birthday in the library she works in. She doesn’t eat the cake despite co-worker Bernice (Rosemary Dunsmore) telling her it is good. Later she overhears Bernice arguing with another co-worker, Gerry (Shaun Austin-Olsen, Forever Knight), who has treated her poorly and taken advantage of her sexually.

killing Gerry

Gerry gets home and, when he puts the light on, finds Anna on his couch. She mentions the look he gave her at work and so she came over. He offers her some whisky (80-year-old, apparently) but she doesn’t drink alcohol. He approaches her and her hand drifts to his crotch before grabbing him and squeeze/twisting. This is the only real display of strength (if indeed it is) we get – later she seems of standard human strength. She leaps on his prone body and bites his neck.

in the underpass

Robbie (Luke Bilyk, Lost Girl & My Babysitter’s a Vampire) wakes after a drinking binge, He is at his sister’s place and she is both pregnant and mad with him for making out with her fiancé whilst drunk. He’s failed to clean himself up… again, and she kicks him out. As Anna walks home from work she sees Robbie in an underpass, ready to sleep rough. He speaks to her, asking about what happens after death? With lukewarm encouragement he follows her home.

Alanna Bale as Anna

He gets in her apartment and asks for a drink – she says she doesn’t drink but then digs out the scotch she took from Gerry’s and offers him a glass. She is honest with him and says that she is a vampire, she will drain him and get high on his blood. He challenges her to do it and then stops her for a moment. He pours the bottle of scotch away saying he won’t drink again as long as he lives. She leaves him on the couch, going to bed. Reading in, she is intrigued by his action but the film doesn’t actually tell us this.

Anna and Boris

We discover she regularly hunts with two vampires, Nina (Ella Jonas Farlinger, also My babysitter’s a Vampire) and Boris (Benjamin Sutherland). We see them feed together and with the lights we see flashed in the scene of Anna attacking Gerry, her words about getting high, and the aftermath of their co-feeding, we see that the blood addiction is definitely akin to a chemical addiction. In fact, we see Robbie hallucinate with the DTs and Anna hallucinate as she kicks blood. The other two don’t understand why she works – she can’t live looting the dead, she suggests. We see that their attitude is one of disdain for humans and Anna starts off sharing this – saying to Robbie she doesn’t f*ck humans. Her attitude shifts and as Robbie looks to kick drink, she looks to kick blood.

blood at mouth

The lore is sparse with this one. They are addicted to blood and suggest that not drinking will lead to their deaths, however Anna holds a hope that she will become human again. Sunlight stings (possibly kills but we only see a flinch and moving out of the direct sunlight) and Anna arrives at work whilst still dark and leaves after dusk. They are immortal – Boris claims to have known Aleister Crowley. Anna warns Robbie of just how dangerous they are but she also struggles to drag his unconscious form so they aren’t that strong and one wonders whether a (prepared) human could hold their own.

hallucinations

The trouble was, this is character driven but I felt motivation was low and reasons for behaviour not well explained. It looks beautiful, with the photography top notch and Alanna Bale offered a strong performance that dovetailed neatly with Luke Bilyk's, but whilst I bought their characters through performance, the same couldn’t be said of presented narrative. It’s a shame but the film felt like it meandered to its ending rather than moved with purpose. 5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On DVD @ Amazon US

On DVD @ Amazon UK