Bride of Project Horror, Day 15: Blood Creek

Tonight is the last night of the Cannibals, Zombies, and Nazis (Oh My!) block of movies, and Blood Creek is the movie that I actually created this block for.  Several of my friends suggested this one when I asked for recommendations (although one of them only recommended it because she likes looking at Henry Cavill, and he's shirtless for a while in this movie), so I added it to the lineup.  Somehow, this movie had entirely escaped my notice before now, so I looked it up, and its description made it sound like it had, well, cannibals, zombies, and Nazis, so there you go.

The movie opens on a small farm in 1936, where a family of German immigrants receives a request to host a visiting German scholar.  When he arrives, they learn that his goals are much more sinister than they'd been led to expect.

Cut to present day...  Evan is a paramedic who also takes care of his elderly father, who suffers from dementia.  Two years earlier, Evan went fishing with his brother Vic, a veteran of the war in Iraq.  During that trip, Vic mysteriously vanished and has not been heard from since.  One night while Evan is asleep, Vic wakes him up, tells him to get as many guns and ammunition as he can, and to get their boat ready - and not to ask any questions.  They travel to the family farm where the movie started, where the buildings are now covered with strange symbols.  The same family still lives there, and none of them have aged since World War 2.  They held Vic prisoner for the two years that he was missing, using him as a source of blood to feed their mysterious visitor, who they are terrified of, although they have managed to confine him and protect themselves from him.  Vic's thirst for vengeance accidentally frees the visitor, threatening to unleash his evil on the rest of the world unless they can figure out a way to stop him...

I've seen Michael Fassbender in two movies this year, Prometheus and Blood Creek.  In Prometheus, of course, he plays David the android, and in Blood Creek, he plays the Nazi scholar who seeks to gain occult power.  If Fassbender isn't careful, he's going to end up typecasting himself into a very narrow niche: the dude who wants to find the secret to everlasting life, and who will fuck your shit up if you stand in his way.

Fassbender is the good part of this movie.  Other than him, though, I don't know.  A little bit of suspension of disbelief is to be expected when you're watching horror, but this movie wants me to suspend just a little bit too much disbelief.  If the family had the bad guy contained, and he relies on them for food, why don't they just stop feeding him?  If he's able to come out of his cell when it's time to eat, why has he never created minions to attack the family's house before this particular night?  If part of his power relies on a certain item, why doesn't he do a better job of protecting it before it leads to his undoing?

I've got to give it a few points for a good boogieman and a pretty original premise, but there are just too many questions that it didn't answer for me.  I give it two runestones out of five.

Tomorrow night: We're going to start the Directors Showcase block of movies.  There's no real common theme to these movies, other than being directed by people whose other work I have enjoyed.  First up is The Brood, by David Cronenberg.