The rule of thumb used to be — and still is, for the most part — that genre films were the best way to address thorny real-life issues that may be too sensitive to deal with directly. Yet the more horror tropes and mythological characters are utilized, the more they can be moved away from their standard trappings and into other, more grounded ones. The vampire is arguably the most ubiquitous of all classic horror creatures, and thus there aren’t many subtextual aspects to them left untouched. There have been at least a handful of vampire films (if not, arguably, all of them) that treat vampirism as analogous to addiction, the creature’s perpetual thirst for blood a stand-in for any substance or general vice that human beings tend to struggle with. Just a couple years ago, the film BLISS (2019) made such an analogy explicit, that movie’s protagonist becoming addicted to blood in a particularly hedonistic way. KICKING BLOOD, a new Canadian film co-written and directed by Blaine Thurier, feels like the next step after BLISS, as it concerns a lifelong vampire, Anna (Alanna Bale), for whom blood acts literally like a drug, and it’s only through her chance meeting with an alcoholic attempting to kick his own habit, Robbie (Luke Bilyk), that she begins to reconsider her need to feed.
KICKING BLOOD morphs the vampire film into a drama so much that it may be off putting to those expecting anything like a typical horror movie. Its initial scenes feel a bit meandering at first, as Anna and Robbie are introduced in a few individual vignettes before finally meeting later. One of the most intriguing elements of the film, the lead performances by Bale and Bilyk, feel a little let down by Thurier and co-writer Leonard Farlinger during these introductory moments. Bale plays Anna with a strong Chloë Sevigny energy, embodying the persona of a hip, functioning junkie with a detached, predatory gaze. This approach makes her both enigmatic and alluring, creating an ambiguity within the character that the film waits a while before peeling back. Robbie, on the other hand, wears his heart on his sleeve, and Bylik has a natural charm about him as an actor that his initial scene tries to paint him as a screw-up, but leaves him feeling more like a lovable scoundrel type that one might find in a sitcom. When Anna meets him shaking and raving on the street in the very next scene, he’s hardly recognizable. This is all done while the film does what every story taking on the vampire mythos must do, which is to establish which bits of vampire lore do or don’t exist in this movie.
While those moments and the too-subtle introduction of Anna’s vampire pack (Benjamin Sutherland and Ella Jonas Farlinger) get things off to a bit of a bumpy start, Thurier manages to let these disparate elements settle in a way that keeps things compelling, lending the film the feeling of a low key indie drama as opposed to Gothic horror or melodrama. What soon becomes clear is that KICKING BLOOD isn’t a film about addiction, but about rehabilitation. Anna becomes inspired by Robbie’s determination to rid himself of his alcohol dependency, especially when he makes it known that he doesn’t care if the effort — or Anna herself — kills him in the process. Thurier understands that using the vampire mythos to tell this story lends it all the grandiosity it needs, and doesn’t stage any scenes where characters melodramatically hit rock bottom. Instead, he and Farlinger keep things as grounded and relatable as possible, portraying the realities of a substance-based lifestyle as depressingly banal: the vampires make their kills with cunning precision, but then wallow for hours afterward blissed out on the blood’s effects, looking like sluggish, pitiable deadbeats akin to alcoholics, heroin users and the like. KICKING BLOOD’s most pervasive aspect is the way the so-called friends of Anna and Robbie enable and manipulate the duo into remaining hooked on their respective substances. Granted, Robbie’s ex Vanessa (Vinessa Antoine) may be a little broad in her coaxing Robbie to drink again with her, but the film knows that having literal vampires in the story (who similarly seduce Anna with reminisces about their varied lives over the centuries) makes such behavior go down easier.
Thurier never attempts to make KICKING BLOOD a fully-fledged horror film, but he does lend the movie an eerie, desolate vibe that melds nicely with the vampiric elements. Shot in Sudbury, Ontario during lockdown, he and director of photography Jonathon Cliff make the onscreen city seem empty in a way that’s both spooky and melancholic. During Anna’s indulging of her blood addiction, the duo employ some vivid colors that evoke both Mario Bava and films like SHE DIES TOMORROW (2020), while the production design of Anna’s apartment lair recalls Jim Jarmusch’s ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2013), another film that explores the long-term effects of vampirism in an indie fashion. While this isn’t the type of movie to employ things like jump scares, it does have a nice sense of menace, stemming from that ambiguity surrounding Anna’s character and the vampires in general.
Once Anna and Robbie are hooked up (in more ways than one), KICKING BLOOD becomes a bit of a riff on “Romeo and Juliet.” Yet unlike other vampire films where a creature of the night falls in love with a human, the film remains focused on Robbie and Anna’s shared quest to return to their substance-less selves rather than any devotion to each other. In this way, the movie treats the notion of vampires as an extreme altered state of humanity as opposed to a fully alien creature that just happens to look human. Vampirism becomes alcoholism or any similar substance abuse, a condition that usually lasts for life but can be potentially reversed, albeit at great cost. While it’s ironic that a movie simply dealing with addicts attempting to rehabilitate themselves would likely be less “fun” than one where a vampire is trying to do the same, KICKING BLOOD is a film that comes the closest to being “real” while providing enough distance through genre elements to make it more universal and relatable. If vampirism isn’t irreversible, maybe no condition is, KICKING BLOOD seems to say, continuing the long tradition of using genre to say what non-genre films can’t state as powerfully.
Tags: Alanna Bale, Benjamin Sutherland, Blaine Thurier, Canada, Ella Jonas Farlinger, Film Festivals, Horror, Jonathon Cliff, Luke Bilyk, Matt Lyon, Rosemary Dunsmore, Toronto International Film Festival, vampires, Vinessa Antoine
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