Blood Relatives – review

Director: Noah Segan

Release date: 2022

Contains spoilers

Watched as a Shudder Exclusive, this film was directed by, written by and starred Noah Segan and, as it started, I really wanted to love it because Segan’s character, Francis, really came across well. When the co-star of the movie appeared, Victoria Moroles playing Jane, I felt even more that this might be something special. Unfortunately, whilst good, I ended up feeling that it missed an important something, as we’ll see.

Noah Segan as Francis

The film starts in Texas and, on a country road, we see a classic muscle car appear. From the car we hear opera, Der Ring Götterdämmerung. As the sun begins to rise, Francis positions the car behind a lonesome billboard and puts a cover over it. Inside the windows are covered by paper and he spends the day in the car.

a trickle of blood

The next evening, he pulls in at a garage located in a small town. The garage owner is in but it is due to close in five minutes and refuses to open the door despite Francis being very precise about the parts he needs. The owner leaves by a back door but Francis is there. We then see Francis looking for the parts, a trickle of blood at his mouth. As he leaves in his car we see the garage on fire and a figure that is clearly a teen watching the vehicle leave.

motel life

Francis gets to Oklahoma and manages to get a room in a hotel with cash, though the hot water is broken. The motel owner sees a kid hanging round his car and goes out but the figure runs off. She sees a door open and finds Francis in the motel’s basement, fixing a pipe – he wants a shower, he says. She questions him about the teen but he is nonplussed. Back in his room he takes a shower and we see he has a scar on his shoulder, as though burnt, and a concentration camp tattoo – he also peppers his sentences with Yiddish.

Victoria Moroles as Jane

In the morning, although he has paper on the windows of his room, he notices someone outside. He pulls the teen into the room, braving the sun. When confronted she tells him about a tryst he had sixteen years before and reveals that she is the child he didn’t know he had (he is not sure how, indicating he believed that as a vampire he was sterile). She has tracked him through his car (which attracts online attention due to its vintage status). She shows some vampiric traits – she slathers on sun cream as she burns easily (though not as vampires burn) and craves meat products. The word dhampir is not mentioned but it is what she is.

Jane reveals fangs

A misunderstanding by the motel owner – who believes that there is something of a sexual predator nature going on – leads us to understand a little more about Jane and vampirism generally. Francis guides her and her fangs emerge, her instincts show her the vein for feeding, which seems to glow. Unfortunately, the unconscious woman wakes and we see that Jane has incredible strength also. The film then follows Francis and Jane, his attempt to leave her with her only relative on her mother’s side and his regret and their attempt to make a life work.

eye mojo

Francis’ backstory was he was a surgeon before the war, but as a Jew he and his family were sent to a concentration camp. It was there that he was deliberately turned by the Nazis and experimented on. After the war he had survived but his family had not and so he secreted himself in a coffin being brought back to America. Additional lore is the implication that a vampire needs invitation (he repeatedly asks to be invited), that a  diet of animal flesh and blood leads to a paunch and male pattern baldness for him and he has eye mojo (though he seems to not use it through glass, implying there must be unfiltered contact).

Josh Ruben as Roger

Unfortunately, if he uses the hypnosis too long, he can scramble the person’s mind. That has happened, accidentally, to Roger Fieldner (Josh Ruben, Scare Me) who is now resident in a mental health institution but refers to Francis as the Master. The fact that this is Renfield-like is underlined by having the Doctor called Seward (Ammie Masterson). Later we get a character called Quincey Morris (Holt Boggs, From Dusk till Dawn: The Series). We do discover that his fangs pop out when angered as well as when ready to feed.

aftermath

Now the film was a pleasant watch, though being a movie on Shudder I don't see why it really eschewed the horror for the most part – with the aftermath of an out of control feed being shown, for instance, but steeped in regret and no actual view of the rampage itself. Rather this concentrated on some gentle comedy, which hit home for the most part, and the development of the father/daughter relationship, which was brought to life really well by the two primary cast members – and despite also being the director, Segan really did give space and support to allow Moroles to shine.

father and daughter

For me, however, it was lacking an impetus, a story. Now I know the exploration of the raltionship is a story but I wanted something more – the character development was fine but there wasn’t actually a relationship hill to climb (OK he leaves her behind, but very quickly comes back and then they get bogged down in the normality of life, but one session of group therapy and he turns that around). There, for me, needed to be something more… but that’s just me. Oh, and to mention there is a blink and miss it werewolf – but again just stage dressing and not really plot at all. Nevertheless, the actors carry this to a place where it is definitely worth a watch. 6 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon US

On Demand @ Shudder via Amazon UK