FILM GUTTER REVIEWS: BLOOD ORANGE (2017)

A blind man tormented by the mysterious disappearance of his dog, is one day visited by a sadistic childhood friend, igniting a disturbing journey of self discovery.
Director
M.P. Wills
Writer
M.P. Wills
Stars
Rahel Romahn Matt Levett  Richard James Allen

Well, 2021 is almost at end – or at the very least, it is for Film Gutter. This has been a consistently strange year, with a lot of ups and downs, and in many regards that seems to sum up our annum of reviewing too. And we’re wrapping things up with another short film offering from the good folks at Alter, who continue to serve up a broad range of offerings of all subgenres from all over the world via the magic of YouTube. Today’s offer I again come to knowing absolutely nothing about, although the words ‘CONTENT WARNING’ after the title do tend to stand out as a beacon this is liable to be a good bet for the Film Gutter treatment. And so it proved…

The main character of Blood Orange is Eli, who has become blind in recent years and depends heavily on his dog Hugo to get around. But we kick off with an interesting frontispiece, which is beautifully narrated to boot, about a child beating the wings of his friend’s pet quail with a hammer. A no-nonsense opening for sure, and sadly the animal cruelty is going to come around again – though obviously staged, unlike the horrors of the likes of Cannibal Holocaust. Because poor Hugo has gone missing – taken by Eli’s sadistic former friend Michael, who proceeds to trim a lock of hair off the dog before burning it alive. We don’t see anything graphic, but this one is still liable to be fairly upsetting to any animal lovers out there.

Eli reports Hugo missing, but the police don’t seem to take him seriously, and his neighbours mostly seem to be complete douchebags, with one in particular taking the opportunity to soak Eli with the garden hose. It’s not long before Michael turns up, ready to revel in the success of his murderous act, even offering Eli a pipe filled in part with the literal ‘hair of the dog’. But Eli is ready for his friend’s antics, and he has a cold, refreshing slice of violence of his own to serve up…

Blood Orange is an intriguing concept, and something that I enjoyed in a cathartic sort of way – it was great to see the most awful protagonist get his comeuppance, as well as the many minor villains of the piece, and while you can’t exactly consider Eli squeaky clean he is the nearest thing we have to a hero of the piece. The outside world has this odd plasticky, unreal feel to it here, just amping up the darkness of Eli’s world that bit further, and the voiceover we have at the start and end of the film are excellent, very well written and also delivered with some real panache in order to effectively deliver both the set-up and denouement outside of the main runtime here.

Blood Orange may not be the very best short film you’re ever liable to see, but everything here is doubtless effective, and the plot is solidly delivered if not staggeringly original. The acting performances are well done, for the limited time that we have, and everyone fits the bill nicely in their parts. Ultimately there’s no real weak areas, but equally no areas that absolutely smash it out of the park – a good all-rounder, you could say.

RATING: 7/10. A quirky and entertaining offering, with a dark sense of humour riddled throughout, enhanced by some lovely voiceover. It’s hard not to find the ending satisfying given what has come before it, and that only adds to the wry touch of the macabre employed here. It almost feels like a short episode of Tales of the Unexpected or something similar, but with more of a modern spin to it. You could spend a quarter of an hour plenty of worse ways!

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