Wicked Blood (Mark Young, 2014): USA

Reviewed by Moa Hellenaes. Viewed at Santa Barbara International Film Festival.

When I saw this film it became one of my favorite films at the festival. It was powerful with an interesting story. The film starts with a caravan exploding and burn up, we later found out what happened. There are few films that start that way, revealing the end. The director, Mark Young, did a great job with that and I thought it made the movie even more interesting. The main characters are actresses that I have seen in films before. Abigail Breslin from My sisters’s keeper (2009) and Alexa Vega from Spy Kids (2001). 

Two sisters live by themselves because their parents are not alive anymore. The younger sister, Hannah, spends a lot of time with one of their uncles, Donny, while the older sister Amber is working at a coffee shop. Uncle Donny is a drug addict who lives in a caravan. The three of them sometimes go to uncle Frank for dinners or special occasions but none of them really enjoy their moments. Uncle Frank and the third uncle, Bobby, are doing illegal business with drugs. Hannah is ready to make her own money and asks Frank for a job.

Hannah is now in the illegal business too, without Amber or Donny knowing about it. It is a secret between her, Frank, Bobby and the buyer wild Bill. Throughout the film things keep on getting more complicated with love, family, guns and drugs. Hannah feels guilty and wants to make everything right but she does not know how.

In this film there was a lot of background music that I did notice, there was also a lot of montages. In the montages there were a lot of picture of the nature. Trees, water and places. I also noticed that they held the camera still many scenes, for the viewers to see the whole picture, not having to focus on what the camera focuses on. The viewers are then able to see what captures their eye, not the director’s. Another thing I thought about was when two people stood in front of each other they did many over-shoulder-shots, almost too many. Overall the acting was good but not during the killing scenes, when people got shot or beaten to death you could see how fake it was. A guy was lying on the ground and when he got hit in the back it looked very weird and not professional at all.

I will probably watch this film again sometime, I liked it very much. I have already told many of my friends about it and can recommend it to anyone. Even if the story is sad the film is still funny and I laughed a lot when I saw it. People in all ages can see it and still feel the same thing.